Because of the Amazons
by wave obscura
Summary: Sequel to "Because of Houdini," an AU in which Dean has cystic fibrosis, a chronic illness of the lungs. Sam's recovery is slow and Dean is keeping secrets. Sick!Dean, sick!Sam. Warnings for language and MINOR Dean/OFC.
1. Chapter 1

Because of the Amazons

by wave obscura

If only they could have just driven off into the sunset. If only it could have ended happily-ever-after that way, with the gleam of the bumper, the exhaust and blue sky and maybe even Sam's hand out the window, surfing a warm breeze.

But there's nothing like that, instead just more highway and more highway and more highway and more highway and driving driving driving east east east, where Sam's head begins to ache and then pound and then throb and then stab.

Luckily there are bottles of meds scattered all over the car; he barely has to move to wrap his fingers around something that should totally obliterate a headache. Still, the pain is so bad that he gropes sightlessly until Dean leans over and drops two pills in his hand.

"That'll knock it on its ass," Dean assures him.

Except it doesn't. Sam begins to sweat, and then he can't open his eyes. He's crying and his sockets feel bone dry.

"Sammy?" Dean says from the driver's seat. "What's wrong with you?"

The fever's back, that's what's wrong. Sam drowses and shivers for miles. He wakes every few minutes to the sound of Dean trying to dislodge something stubborn from his lungs. It's holding on for dear life, so he growls endlessly around it.

Dean chokes Sam's name. "Sam? I need a hand."

Sometimes when it's really tough Dean needs a fist to the back. But Sam's no help, he can't do it, he can barely move.

Soon they're driving faster, making more turns. Sam rubs his forehead against the cool window and he must have started babbling because Dean drives even faster, honking and cursing and coughing.

Sam starts to wonder if this is really his new life, here with Dean, on the road, or simply some delerious cloud, a layer of delusion. Maybe he's lying in the king-sized bed he bought with Jess, the pillow top mattress and the 600-thread count sheets they got on sale at Walmart, the Walmart off the interstate that they snuck into at 3 a.m. because they felt guilty for shopping at the root of all evil and wanted to hide their social irresponsibility from the prying eyes of their fellow students.

Maybe he's in that bed now, with Jess keeping an eye on him, making sure he gets lots of fluids and rest, and maybe Dean has passed away somewhere without them ever having seen each other again.

He didn't even quit his job, his ridiculous bullshit campus job as a desk jockey in the legal services office where he stacked paperclips in the magnetic holder and did homework and sometimes picked his nose when he thought no one was looking. He hadn't quit his job or emailed his professors to say sorry, I'll never be back to class again.

He can still smell Stanford and Jess on his clothes, maybe still in his nostrils. And it hurts.

He wishes he could stop his mouth from moving. He really doesn't want Dean to hear any of this.

They keep driving.

Sam's delirium delivers him a shitty motel room fifteen years ago, on Valentine's Day, where himself-as-a-child is contemplating a box of Alf valentines and a sheet of ice cream cone stickers. _Short Circuit_ is on the TV, a robot with animatronic eyebrows, a single woman of the 80s who lives in a huge house on the ocean by herself.

Dean-as-a-child is sitting on his knees, bent forward on the floor to the right of the TV. He's having an asthma attack. To stay calm he presses two fingers to the dent where his chest and neck meet, and that helps him breathe better.

He's having a really hard time, though, he's miserable, he's been fighting this all night and nothing's helping and Dad's gone so no hospital, no emergency room, not unless it's an absolute emergency.

Sam-as-a-child doesn't really notice his brother's distress, though. He is far more worried that his Alf valentines will appear lame to his classmates, who will have valentines from more popular TV shows and movies.

And he questions the relationship between Alf and the ice cream cones. Alf eats cats, not ice cream. Surely his friends at school will notice the disparity and laugh.

"Sammy." Dean's brows clash together with misery. He squirms and repositions the two fingers. Dad once explained why Dean does this- it makes his throat smaller, or something, makes it feel like he's taking in more air. It's a trick, nothing else.

"Take another hot shower," Sam whines, because he doesn't have time to deal with his brother, he has to figure out where to place the ice cream cone stickers so that they make sense with the pictures of Alf and his family. Then he has to think of personalized messages to write on each and every valentine, messages that will make or break potential friendships.

"Turn off... the TV... Sam...?"

"I'm watching it."

Dean makes a frustrated noise and goes to the window. He bends over the sill. He forces a few coughs- he does that when he can't breathe because sometimes it'll get better, if he can get whatever's stuck in there to come up. But they've done PT already and his lungs are cleared of mucus. The asthma doesn't care if the lungs are clear or clogged, though. The asthma does whatever it feels like.

Dean moves from the windowsill to the bed. From sitting on the bed to his hands and knees, head dangling between his shoulders, ribcage rising and falling. Pacing back and forth in front of the beds. Back to the right of the TV. He takes a hit from his inhaler, not that it's going to make any difference because he's already hit it ten times tonight.

Sam observes this memory, this scene, in his adult delirium, like an out-of-body experience. He can see his young self fretting over the valentines, totally oblivious as Dean circles the room again and again in helpless suffering. And he understands his childish indifference because it was just one of a thousand times Dean felt sick or couldn't breathe.

What he doesn't understand, though, is why Dean is so upset, why Dean doesn't just use his neb, which always kills the asthma when nothing else works.

Then he remembers, with force, like someone took him by the back of the head and shoved his face in truth.

There was no medicine. It was gone, so was Dad, and Sam didn't care.

Sam-as-a-child makes a face at his stack of valentines. They have to be perfect, these valentines, or he's positive his whole life will just end.

Adult Sam snaps out of his delirium then, for just a moment. Dean-as-adult envelopes him, flannel and gravely lungs, hauls him up a sidewalk or maybe a drive way, either way it quivers and rocks under Sam's feet and his whole body trembles.

"This is Sammy," Dean says to someone else. "This is my little brother."

Sam's eyes open hours later. He's lying on a sofa and can tell by the thick quality of the air that it's nighttime. Across the room on the opposite couch, a woman straddles Dean, butterflied panties and what Jess would call a "cami." A long red braid falling down her back. She fingers the button of Dean's g-tube with long white fingers.

"I'm glad you got it," the woman says. She sounds German, like a German who's been in the country for years. "Look at you now. Fucking _look_ at you."

Sam closes his eyes.

OOOO

"Sam," the woman's voice says.

"Uh?"

"You had a little relapse, but your fever is gone. Wake. Drink. Be quiet, your brother is resting."

His eyes fly open. He smells coffee. The woman surprises him by being in her mid-forties, at least. Her face is carved, freckled, lined, beautiful. She sits on the coffee table, white legs crossed, still in her butterfly panties and her hair frizzes in a halo around her face, the way Jess's used to.

He squeezes his eyes closed.

"You miss her," the woman says, "it will get better. Soon you'll hardly think of her at all. Sit up. Drink."

Sam clears his throat, which is burning with the shit in his lungs. He gropes for the cup of coffee in her hands, takes a sip. He wonders what time it is. It feels like afternoon. Which means Dean hasn't-

"Don't worry," the woman says, "he had treatments this morning, again this afternoon."

Sam lugs himself up so that at least one foot is touching the floor. Maybe the fever's gone but he still feels disoriented, like he can't get his bearings.

He sips the coffee again, blinks a few times and studies her. She's dressed now, suddenly, or at least she's wrapped in a robe. Behind her, Dean is fast asleep, fully clothed. The light across his face is orange, like sunset.

The coffee tastes organic and expensive. He can tell by the buzz outside that they're in a city; a glance out the window and he knows they're in a tallish building. The apartment smells faintly of incense, long gone but lingering in the fabric of the mismatched furniture.

The place is reminiscent of Bobby's house, only much smaller, with bookshelves on every wall, books that looked ready to crumble to dust.

Sam feels greasy and dry all at once. He wonders again what time it is.

"It's nearly seven," the woman supplies.

"Are you reading my mind?"

She smiles. "Nothing so high-tech."

"But you're a psychic."

"I'm a nurse."

Alright fine. Sam gives up, looking over her shoulder at Dean. "He should have oxygen when he sleeps."

The woman stares at him. "What did I just say, stupid boy? I'm a nurse."

She hates him. He can feel it radiating off of her.

"Right now Dean's health is good," she says.

Sam shakes his head. "Look, ma'am-"

"When his health is good, why be cautious? Celebrate with him. Help him enjoy it."

"It is _not_ good. You have no idea-"

The woman throws up a hand to silence him. He doesn't know why, but he closes his mouth.

"Instead you do the opposite." She sips at her own coffee, and shakes her head. "He thinks the world of you. I can't say I agree."

Sam reels for a moment. "And who are you?"

The woman nods at Dean. "He comes to me when he's ill. When he can. I take care of him."

"How long?"

Her mouth quirks. "Since he was of legal age."

"Do you have a name?"

"Of course I do."

She moves to Dean's couch. With her long white fingers she rubs at Dean's chest. He sighs but doesn't wake. "You want him to get a transplant."

"What?"

"New lungs. A healer. Anything to make him well. Anything."

"Of course I do."

"Don't."

Sam doesn't even want to know what she's getting at. He thinks it's probably time they get the fuck out of here. He gulps the rest of his coffee and stands.

"You're always the drama queen," she says, "Sit. Finish your coffee."

Sam doesn't know why, but he sits. "Who the hell are you?"

The woman shakes her head: you're hopeless, and slides her hands down Dean's back, up to the nape of his neck. "It's important for him, to have hands at his back. I hope you understand this. He doesn't know another way to be loved."

Dean brow furrows a little, as if he's in pain.

"He's not hurting," she says, the moment after Sam's done thinking it.

Maybe she's not reading his mind, but she's sure as hell doing something.

"This is my whole point, Sammy," she continues. "You should try to listen. Sometimes relief hurts just as badly. Maybe worse. Do you understand?"

"No. Not in the slightest."

The woman laughs at him, practically scoffs. "This is because you think you understand suffering. The truth? Not even the first inkling. Listen to me, if you can. No healers. No operations."

"Why?" Sam plonks his coffee cup down hard on the table and immediately feels dramatic but _goddamn_. "Why in the fuck not? Why should I just let him die?"

"I've told you. More than once. You don't listen, you don't have ears. Go ahead, try to save him. There is no keeping a fool from his destiny."

And that seems to be that. She briefly curls her lip at him, then turns soft eyes on Dean.

"Sweetheart," she whispers. "Your brother is awake."

Dean slides his hand over hers, sighing.

"He's fine," the woman says, as if Dean asked a question.

Sometimes Dean's first few waking breaths make him choke. When he leans forward to cough, the woman is ready, holding her now-empty coffee cup under his mouth. She claps him on the back exactly where Sam knows his brother would need to be clapped, with the exact force he would need, and when Dean finally begins to cough up the gunk, she watches him not with disgust or pity or even curiosity, but with a look of blank necessity, as if she's witnessing something she's witnessed a hundred, maybe a thousand times.

She looks back at Sam. "If you can find a way to stop making this about yourself-"

"Em." Dean's eyes fly open, and he speaks sternly. "Leave him alone."

The woman, Em, apparently, turns his gaze to Dean. "I tell you and tell you. You think too much of him."

Dean smiles, squeezing her hand. "And you say you have The Gift."

"I say nothing."

"Tell him to sleep, will you?"

"You should be the one sleeping," she says. "Soon your brother will run you ragged. Right into your grave. And the stupid bastard won't even know it."

Dean seems to find this amusing. "Please, Em. He's sick."

Em sighs monumentally. She turns to Sam. "Try to hear me, Sam Winchester. Try. And sleep."

Her long white fingertips flutter dismissively in his direction. Sam's eyes grow so heavy he can't keep them open. All the energy drains from his body like someone pushed an off button, and he slumps over so hard that he bashes his head on the framing beneath the padding of the sofa.

But things don't go black, exactly. It's more like transition between one scene and the next, blinking in and out of two places at once, an awkward mesh of sleep and wake, sleep and wake, sleep and wake.

OOOO

He wakes like someone ripped him from sleep, almost against his will, one minute blackness and the next his eyes are wide open. It's daytime again. There's bacon sizzling somewhere, the smell of it makes his stomach contract with stabbing hollowness.

There are voices talking low from the direction of the kitchen.

"...so fucking hard to find," Dean is saying. "Why you gotta torture me like that, huh?"

"You can eat it," Em answers. The sizzling goes intense for a moment-she must have flipped the bacon. Moisture gathers on Sam's tongue. He is _starving_.

"I can't, Emmy. He won't understand."

"Who cares if he understands? You must eat."

"I don't know know how to explain-"

"-explain that you want to eat without pain."

There's silence for a moment. Dean apparently doesn't have an answer.

"Tell him," Em says. "He's awake. Listening."

Sam hears Dean's hurried footsteps into the living room. "Sammy?"

It's not until Dean is helping him sit that he realizes how weak he is, in fact he nearly topples forward onto the floor, remaining upright only because Dean's hand is across his chest.

There's something different about Dean. He notices it right away, but can't quite put his finger on it.

"Morning," he croaks, smiling.

"Morning," Dean says, "that was quite a relapse you had, Sammy. Damn."

"I feel a little better."

"You hungry?"

"Yeah."

Dean lifts him onto shaky legs.

Em is fully dressed now, green scrubs with black and white pandas somersaulting across her blouse. She smiles acidicly at him, sipping from a coffee cup in one hand and flipping a pancake with the other.

"Good morning," he says politely. The bacon is piled up in the middle of the kitchen table. He eyeballs it ravenously.

"Morning," Em says.

"Sammy, Em, Em, Sammy," Dean says, taking his seat.

Sam's about to demand a more detailed introduction when he notices- Dean's color has changed. He's been pale with darkly-tinged lips since the beginning of time. Now he's flushed, almost pink.

"He looks good, no?" Em says. "I'm better at PT than you, that's why."

Sam blinks. "Have I done something to offend you?"

"Not yet. But you will." Em nods at her own comment, dumping a pancake onto his plate. "He hears his body best. Not doctors. Not websites. Certainly not you."

Sam thought Dean was pink before- he turns almost pastel, frosting on an Easter cupcake.

"Christ, Em," he says. "He's been helping me with that shit since he was a little kid."

"You have a strange definition of 'help,' my dear. Eat. You cannot live on bananas." She pushes the plate of bacon at Dean.

Dean scowls at the food, and makes no move to eat it.

Sam does the math quickly in his head- fruit equals simple carbohydrates, which equals easy digestion, which means-

"Are you out of enzymes, Dean?"

Dean's cheeks go pinker with guilt. Em lifts her teabag in and out of her cup. "Just tell him the truth. Your Sammy is an asshole, my dear, not a moron."

She drifts to the kitchen window, which looks out at nothing but the rectangular gray slab of another city building, pausing to cup Dean's face in her hand for just a moment. Dean stares down at his plate with a pained, almost angry expression on his face.

"You're kidding me," Sam says. "How did you let this happen?"

Dean continues to stare at his food. And then Sam figures out what's different, besides Dean's color.

He hasn't coughed, not once in ten minutes. Not even little suppressed coughs. And his breathing is quiet, normal. Which isn't always unusual. But now, when he's still recovering? Sometime isn't right.

Em turns around, wiping moisture from her eyes. "I'm late for work, Dean. Tell him. Explain."

Dean licks his lips. He picks up his fork and cuts a wedge out of the stack of dry pancakes, then rests both the fork and the food on his plate. "I have some left. But they're expired. I uh- they're not any good."

Sam nods. He's got a piece of bacon between his thumb and forefinger, all it would take is one quick movement to get something into his stomach. He is _so fucking_ hungry. But he puts it back on his plate. "We'll have to find a clinic. Or get you to an ER."

"We can make it to Bobby's in two days, if we drive in shifts. Until then I'll just have to eat whatever I can eat."

Em waves her long white fingers. "Or I can help."

"How?" Sam demands.

Em gives him that I-hate-you-more-than-life-itself look again. She goes to Dean, slides her hand across his stomach. Dean winces, drawing in a tight breath. His hand captures her wrist, as if he's going to stop her from touching him. But then it falls away.

After a moment, Dean takes a big bite of his pancakes. He holds the food in his mouth, looking pained again, staring down at the plate like it's some kind of sin.

"Emmy," he says, looking at her. A conversation passes between them, something Sam can't translate, expressions he's never seen before on his brother's face.

"Dean," she says.

"Please," Dean says. "Emmy. Do it."

Without warning, her long white fingers are on Sam's forehead and he feels himself going in and out again, in and out, wake and sleep.

And then just sleep.

:::

To be continued.


	2. Chapter 2

PART TWO

After a violent swirling sensation (a goldfish flushed down the toilet), Sam wakes up painfully lucid, present in the world in a way he hasn't been for days. His head is almost too clear. He opens his eyes, sees a ceiling, and slams them shut once again.

"Hey," Dean says, shaking him. "Sammy. Hey."

He can feel Dean sitting close, the bed dipping near his hip.

"Time is it?"

"Around nine," Dean says. "In the morning."

"How long I been asleep?"

"'bout twenty-four hours."

"Where are we?"

"Motel."

Sam opens his eyes. Definitely a motel. The hum of the highway outside means they're back in a rural area. Curtains drawn, must be overcast outside because it's still mostly dark and Dean is little more than a shadow. Sam reaches over and flips on the light.

His brother squints at him, smiling a feeble smile. He's gone back to whitish-blue, is curled in on himself, breathing in shallow sips to keep from coughing, eyes telling Sam everything he won't say out loud, _Sammy I don't feel well. Sammy I'm in pain. Sammy I can't breathe. Sammy take care of me. _

Sam closes his eyes, breathes deep.

"You look like you're having a rough day," he says.

"I'm glad you're finally awake," Dean says, and damn does he look like shit.

Maybe (hopefully) Em and her magical healing powers were just a figment of Sam's fevered imagination. He opens his mouth to demand to know more about the woman, where the hell they are, where they hell they were, where the hell they're going, what hell they're doing.

His mouth closes. First things first.

"Have you done your chest?"

Dean looks pained. "Tried. But I don't have anything left but albuterol."

Sam nods, swallowing back the urge to fly into a rage. Because it's his fault, isn't it? If he hadn't spent the last week slowly dying of supernatural CF (God, how ridiculous that sounds), maybe Dean would still have something left.

He thinks back to the sad makeshift arsenal of medications in Dean's trunk. How sad it was then. How sad and empty it must look now.

"Are you absolutely sure you don't have anything?"

Dean nods wearily, and shifts himself so that his back is to Sam.

Sam cups his hands and begins to pound, harder than usual. His brother can still cough up the shit without medicine. It'll just be a pain in the ass.

Dean relaxes instantly beneath his hands, even lets out a near-inaudible sigh. Sam feels himself relaxing, too.

"So," Sam says as calmly as he can manage. "You wanna tell me about your little friend?"

"No."

"Tell me anyway."

"She's," Dean says. "She's, well. She's just a little… she's a free spirit."

"A free spirit," Sam repeats incredulously. "Not the word I would use."

He keeps his pound strong and steady, his mouth shut, hoping Dean will continue on his own. But the cough comes instead, first just a low crackle in his chest, then rasping hairball sound. Dean reaches over the side of the bed for the trashcan and hangs his head in. Sam can't really tell if he's hacking up mucus or vomiting or both but whatever it is, it sounds painful. And all he can do is keep pounding.

He waits until Dean surfaces again, giving him a minute or two to catch his breath.

"You let her doing something to me. To us."

"She's harmless."

"Harmless."

"Yeah. You deal with what she deals with, it practically makes you mentally ill."

"Meaning what?"

Dean shrugs under Sam's hands. "You didn't notice her finishing your sentences for you?"

"So she's psychic."

"She's. Well, sorta. She only senses the bad stuff, I guess—emotions, intentions, thoughts. And she only foresees disaster. But I don't buy her whole future-telling deal anyway. I think that's where her crazy comes in."

"I see," Sam says.

Something in his gut sinks. He probably doesn't want to know the answer to his next question, in fact something tells him that everything will turn out infinitely better if he just shuts his damn mouth right here, right now.

But of course he can't stop himself. "She put me to sleep. More than once. You ate bacon without enzymes."

If Dean looked tired before, these questions make him look nearly comatose. "Sam, please. Feels like I got rubber cement in my lungs, okay?"

"Just tell me."

Dean sighs long sufferingly, and bends back over the garbage can. But it's okay, Sam can outlast him. He always does.

After a minute he repeats: "Tell me."

"It's just a mind trick, okay? Like psychic aspirin or a—a—psychic sleeping pill. Nothing stronger than that, though, believe me."

Sam snorts. "So no psychic morphine drip?"

"No psychic morphine drip. In fact her goddamn psychic enzymes barely work. Spend most of the morning puking my guts out."

So it doesn't sound unreasonable. Or dangerous. Or harmful. It even sounds like Dean is telling the truth.

But maybe not.

Sam slows his pound, and slides his hands up to knead at Dean's shoulders. The more relaxed Dean is, the more likely he is to tell the truth.

"And what's the catch?"

Dean leans in, wincing a little as Sam drives his thumb into a stubborn knot in his neck. "Nothing, Sam. Really. I feel extra shitty a day or two, that's all. Snot comes back, the undigested shit gets thrown up, and it sucks. The end. No big deal."

Sam hears Em in his head, _sometimes relief hurts just as badly _.

Dean bends over the trash can, huffing fiercely, coughing until the back of his neck turns bright red. Nothing else is going to come up, Sam can tell. Not without a fight that Dean doesn't have the energy for.

"You've gotta have something," Sam says. "I'll go look."

"It's fine. Don't stop."

"Nope," Sam says. "Be right back."

He leaves Dean choking over the trashcan and steps into the dull morning. It's muggy; he breaks into a sweat mere seconds after he steps outside. There's the Impala, right in front of their door, dust-caked and waiting. She almost looks disappointed to be parked. Not too different from Dean.

He was never going to see either of them ever again. And now here he is.

What the hell was he was thinking, when Dean asked "what's next" and Sam responded "anything"?

The novelty of throwing away his old life to do the right thing has worn off quick.

The idea of hunting makes his skin crawl, though investigating the ghost at Stanford—breaking into buildings, visiting the morgue—was almost comforting in it's familiarity, like slipping back into an old skin, a snugness both serene and suffocating.

He's already wondering whether the feeling is ever, ever going to go away. It sends a very real, very conspicuous pain shooting through his head, right between his eyes.

Or maybe he's just getting a headache.

Yeah, it's a headache.

He squints against the pain as he opens the trunk and rummages through rest of the bottles for anything that will thin mucus, open airways, digest food-anything Dean might have missed.

Many of the bottles are empty, as well as all of the boxes containing single doses of breathing medications and antibiotics (many of which are supposed to be kept in a refrigerator anyway—they're going to have to figure something out about that). There's really, really hardly anything left, except a few pain meds and half a dozen bottles of long expired enzymes.

The night he left Jess, he was in a scramble. He'd forgotten a slew of Dean's medications in the refrigerator after he'd so painstakingly arranged and sorted them. And then… and then Dean had used most of the rest of it trying to keep Sam alive.

But no point in thinking of that right now. He digs through the trunk until he's elbow deep. There aren't any inhalers left either, all the canisters are empty. He knows Dean keeps them everywhere—in his jacket pockets, in his duffels, in the glove box—he hopes those aren't empty as well, but he can't bring himself to look.

What _is_left is the oxygen concentrator, which thank god someone—Bobby maybe—thought to get for Dean. It doesn't run out, it pulls oxygen right out of the air. It's not going to help him clear his chest, but it's something.

They have to get to Bobby's.

But then what?

His head is really starting to hurt.

Clutching the concentrator to his chest, he stumbles toward the motel door. The pain spikes, so sharp his eyes squeeze shut and won't open again. The feeble rays of the sun become blades that slice cleanly through his skull. He stumbles on the one step, falling against the door. With the heel of his hand he digs into his forehead, sliding in cold sweat. It hurts, it hurt so fucking bad he's sure his sinuses will explode right out of his face, his teeth with crumble, he's going to sit right here on the stoop of the motel and piss in his pants because it _hurts_.

And then he feels something else entirely.

The heat of bright bright sun, so bright that for a moment he can't see anything at all. Gradually the light fades away and there's grass, blue sky, an enormous sprawling building that can't be anything else but a hospital.

There's a sign at his elbow, and he knows instinctively that he's supposed to look at it. St. Luke's Boise Medical Center. It seems like it should sound familiar to him, but it doesn't.

The light comes again, blinding him. When it fades away he's inside, his nose no more than two inches from a sign on the wall: _Room 808_. He moves into the doorway; all he can see is a bed curtain and a pair of socked feet.

He's not going to like what he finds inside. He knows this instinctively. He slips in the room anyway, tip toeing toward the curtain with needlessly quiet precision while he works up the strength to actually look at what's behind it.

It's Dean, of course, lying in a hospital bed. He's free of many of the expected wires and machines, nothing more than an oxygen mask and an IV. He's uncovered, wearing only a hospital gown. The bed is inclined so that he's nearly sitting up. There's a fan blowing in his face. His eyes are open but rolled halfway into his head, his mouth totally slack beneath the mask.

Sam stands there in horror for what might as well be a lifetime. The seconds are so long between each of Dean's breaths that Sam is positive that each and every one of them will be his last.

A woman sits at Dean's bed, a nursing assistant, most likely, a forty-ish nondescript woman with dark hair.

"…thinking about getting a dog," she's saying, "Which I don't know about because their apartment is so tiny, but gosh, if it stops her from having kids so young than I'm all for it, I guess."

She smoothes her hand down Dean's arm. "Anyway, your Dad'll be around again soon, I'm sure. We've been calling him every day, telling him how well you've hanging on, waiting for him. He'll show, honey. Don't worry."

She pets at Dean's forehead. Dean's eyes roll slowly, slowly downward, until they're mostly focused, mostly gazing at the nurse.

"Try to stay awake a little longer," she says. "I'm sure your dad will be back soon. Just a little longer."

"Dying?" Dean heaves.

"You're very ill, honey."

"Dying," he heaves again, as if it's already been decided.

And Sam guesses it has.

The nurse continues to pet Dean's hair. It's too long, Sam bets so long it would probably hang in his eyes if she weren't plowing it back.

"It's okay, honey, if you can't wait. Your dad will understand. It's okay."

"Sammy?" Dean says, so softly that a stranger probably wouldn't be able to make it out.

But Sam does. Maybe Dean doesn't even know he said it, because his eyes are rolled up in his face again, his mouth slack, his chest rising and falling irregularly as if it might stop at any moment.

Someone knocks softly on the doorjamb behind him.

Sam turns, and nearly jumps out of his skin.

It's Em.

He flinches automatically, fully expecting some kind of hideous verbal assault. But she doesn't seem to see him, and then she walks right through his shoulder.

The female nurse looks up, looking nearly as surprised. "Hello there. I'm Heidi, I've been taking care of your, uh…?"

"Nephew. Hello," Em says, briefly shaking Heidi's hand. She rests her hand on Dean's forehead, then his cheek, then his chest. "He's leaving his body. Tonight, probably."

"Yes."

Em stares at her for a moment, wrinkling her nose. "And where is his father?"

Heidi shakes her head.

Em nods, as if that were precisely the response she was expecting. "Disappeared. The moment he thought he was free, of course. I need a moment with Dean. Alone."

"Certainly."

One Heidi is gone Em pulls up a chair and sits. For long minutes she pets Dean's forehead just as the nurse did. Sam moves closer to the bed, careful to keep his distance. Every so often, Dean's chest sharply collapses, expands again. He's breathing on autopilot, fruitlessly sucking down air like some kind of broken machinery that's been left plugged in.

Sam realizes that his brother is literally minutes from death, that this is fucking _it _.

But at the same time his brain is screaming _this is not real this is not real this is not real. _

Because it's not, it really isn't. He barely feels his feet on the floor. When he turns his head the world blurs. He can feel the pavement in the real world scraping against his palms, his forehead against the cold motel door. Just a dream. Just a dream.

"I've told you and told you, my place in hell is long reserved," Em says suddenly. "It all ends the same. But I promised you, didn't I? I promised you. And why not? There is no keeping a fool from her destiny."

She stands, the chair squealing across the floor, never taking her hand off Dean's chest.

"You can breathe, Dean. Listen to me. You can breathe."

Dean's chest collapses, expands again. After a shorter time, it collapses and expands once more. And then again, a little faster. And then he's still struggling but it's more steady, expand collapse, expand collapse, expand collapse.

Em presses a kiss to Dean's forehead and turns away from his bed. There are tears in her eyes.

She looks directly at Sam. "My mistake," she says. "Our mistake." And then she keeps walking, right through Sam's body.

In that moment the light returns, the pain in his head, both so blinding that he can hear himself begin to whimper. Now all he feels is the sidewalk beneath him, the explosive pain in his head, the muggy morning and the faintly moldy smell of old shitty motel.

Then fingers tight around his biceps, and Dean screaming his name.

"Jesus Christ, Sammy? Jesus Christ."

"You were dying, Dean. I'm telling you, you were lying in a hospital bed fucking dying and that _woman_—Em—Em, she came in and she healed you, Dean. She fucking healed you."

"Sammy. Calm down," Dean says. He's dragging Sam inside, they're both collapsing on the bed, panting hard. "You're freaking me out."

Sam takes a moment to catch his breath. His head is still total agony, but nowhere near as bad as moments ago. He wills himself to calm, or at least to prevent his next words from coming out as a shriek.

"It wasn't a dream, Dean. It was some kind of… I don't know. She showed me—after Dad ditched you at the hospital. You were dying. In Boise. In fucking Boise, Dean, and she stopped you from dying."

"Sam, listen to me. No she didn't."

"Did you know? Did you know she came?"

Dean shakes his head, nothing but sincerity on his face. "I had no idea."

"She could heal you if she wanted, couldn't she? Why hasn't she healed you completely?"

"She can't heal me."

There's a deliberate pause, rush of air from Dean's inhaler, and Sam thanks god his brother still has that, at least. He buries his face in the pillow. The pain is quickly easing off, but it's like he can't get his muscles to relax. All he can see is Dean dying, Dean dying, Dean on his death bed.

"Why can't she? Why can't she fucking heal you?"

"It's a mind trick, Sam. I told you. She kept me breathing long enough to recover, that's it."

"What's the fucking difference?" Sam disentangles himself from his brother, and sits up, looking Dean in the eye. Inside he feels absolutely hysterical; he can't believe Dean never thought to mention this before, someone who could save him from death.

"Sam. Listen to me, okay? She can't heal me. She can't take the CF away. No one can. You need to stop this."

"She got into my head."

"She gave you a bad dream. That's all, okay? A bad dream." Dean smiles. "I promise you Sam, she's harmless."

"Why would she do that?" Sam disentangles his arm and rubs at his temple. "Why in the fuck?"

"It's stupid, Sam. It's really stupid. She's crazy, okay? She's nuts."

"Spit it out." Sam keeps his face in the pillow but he knows anyway that Dean is rolling his eyes.

"She thinks that you're going to find me a healer," he says. "Like a real healer. And then after I'm healed, she says things are gonna change. She had a vision of me losing my soul, burning in hell. And she thinks it's going to be all your fault. She pretty much thinks you're going to destroy the world."

Sam snorts. "That _is_ pretty goddamn insane."

Dean smiles. "Yeah. I do that to the ladies."

For a moment they share a tired laugh. The pain in Sam's head eases away until it's nearly gone, leaving nothing behind but bone-deep exhaustion.

"We have a long drive," Dean says. "I should get a nap in."

Sam runs his fingers through his sweaty hair. "If she's so nuts then why… why bother with her?"

"Well. Sometimes on hunting trips when Dad… and when you were at Stanford…" Dean shakes his head. "Doesn't matter, Sam. Can I go to sleep now?"

Sam hears the message loud and clear, _she was there when you weren't_.

And he doesn't particularly feel like talking about that either.

"Yeah. Yeah okay."

Dean doesn't move though. He has something else to say.

Sam waits.

"I… I never wanted you to see me like that. I'm gonna get her for that one, believe me."

"I'll have to see you like that someday."

Dean shrugs. "Not necessarily. And definitely not today."

Bullshit, not necessarily. Now there isn't anything but Dean, here, a warm hand on his back, the bed dipping at his hip, and what the hell is he going to do when Dean really is dying? Sit around and wait? Watch TV? Read the paper?

He was ready, just a few days ago, to let Dean go when the time came. To enjoy what they had when they had it, to stop mourning the future, to start collecting memories instead of scars.

But now he's seen it. The image of his brother's deathbed isn't going to leave him, and the thought of seeing it again, when it happens, sends a load of bile to the back of his throat.

He just can't let it happen, that's all.

Not any time soon.

:::

To be continued.


	3. Chapter 3

PART THREE

Dean's first love was a bouncy little girl from Detroit. They were in the first grade, her name was Leah, and she had no less than four pigtails sprouting from the top of her head, long long long and Dean wanted nothing more but to wrap his fingers around their coarseness and tie them all into a big frizzy knot.

As a project their whole class made a cookbook, each page dedicated to a child's family recipe. For the sake of cuteness, no spelling or grammar was corrected. Among all the cookie and cake and pie and lasagna recipes, this is what Dean wrote:

_Get sum bolls and opin the packits of otmeel poot the otmeel in the bolls add the watter and take yur enzimes and wate for it to cull be for you feed to yur littel bruther or his mowth will bern._

Calls were made, they skipped town the next day and he never saw Leah again.

Then there was Amber, whom he met in the hospital. CF patients weren't supposed to hang out together (exchanging germs could be lethal) so Dean and Amber would sneak into the day room for a few precious minutes before someone noticed them missing from their beds.

"You weiner doesn't work," Amber told him shortly after he'd made it to second base (which, at age ten, didn't mean much more than holding hands).

"Yeah it does," Dean said, scowling at her. "Does too."

"Nuh uh." Amber tossed back her veil of dark hair, showing off her recently pierced ears. Little fake pearls glowed against her tan earlobes.

"The mucus blocks your pee hole," she explained. "None of the sperm can get out to go to the woman's vagina, so you can't ever have kids."

"I don't have mucus in my pee hole!" Dean protested.

"Yes-huh," Amber said, nodding. "Ask anyone."

So Dean asked his nurse that night. She told him most CF men were missing the tubes that carried the sperm from the testes to the urethra. Dean had no idea what a urethra was, but apparently this new information was supposed to make him feel better. It didn't.

Anyway, Dean was discharged a couple of days later and that was the last he ever saw of Amber.

And then of course there was Derek's girlfriend Jennifer Higgins, in her Dad's Escalade on that horrible, horrible homecoming night.

"Hurry _up_," She kept saying, while he fumbled with his pants. "Fucking _hurry up_."

Dean paused, wondering if the added stamina of hitting his inhaler would be worth the humiliation. The anxiety of what he was about to do made his chest tight and his palms sweaty, and his dick wasn't cooperating either, given he was just minutes away from the worst lung bleed of his life. But he tried, damn it, and finally got hard only for her to say "where's the condom?"

Frustrated, he entertained the idea of saying "the mucus blocks my pee hole, bitch" and walking his ass home. But her bra was off and god knew when he'd have the opportunity again.

He coughed out that first wave of blood while wrestling with the condom, she put her bra back on and yelled _my dad's seats my dad's seats my dad's seats _and that was the end of that.

After that there were a couple more Jennifers, an Amanda, an Erin and a Candy and Renee. He came very, very close with each of them. But when it came down to the moment all he could hear was _my dad's seats my dad's seats my dad's seats_ and he could feel the blood hot and swampy in his lungs, pushing at his throat. It left him shaking, sent him running.

It was just a sad coincidence, he knew that. There was no connection between his worst bleed and his first honest-to-God sexual experience. He told himself this until he was blue in the face. But his psyche (not to mention his dick) wouldn't listen.

And then there was Jenna. Dean doesn't remember much about her because she wasn't Dean's first, she was Sam's. Dean knows because he was in the next room trying to watch TV. It all sounded very loud and awkward and fumbling and short and probably more painful than fun.

Dean just sat there and tried not to listen, eventually grabbed a beer out of the fridge and sat on the front stoop until he saw Jenna's silhouette under the street lights, darting across the motel parking lot and into her red Cabriolet.

He'll take the secret to his grave, that Sam managed to get laid before he did.

"You can still come in second," Em said to him just a few days later, raising her eyebrow. "We'll call it a photo finish."

So then, a couple of weeks before his twenty-first birthday, there was Em. It only seemed fitting; he'd been crawling to her doorstep for free health care, whenever Dad or Sam disappeared somewhere, since he was seventeen.

After Em there were even more Jennifers, Amandas, a Marisol and a Lucy and even a Leah. There were lung bleeds, too, some serious, some minor. But he never heard _my dad's seats my dad's seats my dad's seats _ever again.

OOOO

They pass another mile post; now there's only like a billion to go till they're at Bobby's. Dean holds the wheel with his knee, peels his fifth banana and dreams about sinking his teeth into a great big greasy pizza.

His dreams of overcooked pepperoni, how it would curl up at the edges to form little cups of grease that would scald the top of his mouth when he took a bite, maybe so bad the skin between his two front teeth would burn and swell. He'd bite anyway, upside down so the cheese would fucking melt over his tongue, the strands of oozing mozzarella snapping away from the crust and sauce, falling down his chin in a hot stripe.

God, it would be so good.

And he could do it, he could totally do it. His belly would bloat and ache like a bitch and maybe he'd puke or get the shits or both, but it would be worth it. Sometimes you gotta trade one discomfort for another.

"No," Sam says, and Dean flinches out of his reverie.

"No what?"

Sam had been dozing. He pushes himself away from the passenger window and straightens his clothes. "You'll be able to eat soon."

"Easy for you to say."

Which really isn't fair. As a show of solidarity, Sam had declared himself on a voluntary hunger strike before they left the motel. But goddamn if Dean was going to let him get sick again by starving himself. So he'd sat there and watched Sam finish a whole poppyseed muffin with a carton of milk (god, the way the butter slid over the dome of the muffin, it had looked so fucking _moist_), and the smell had damn near killed him.

"You want me to drive for a while?"

"No. Gotta do something with my hands. I'm gonna chew my fingers off."

"You look tired."

"I'm not tired." And it's true. He's too goddamn hungry to be tired.

"Anything you can eat that would be more filling?"

Dean shakes his head. "Fruit fruit and more fruit."

"Just a little while longer."

"Uh huh. Go back to sleep."

Sam rebelliously straightens up, but after they drive in silence for a few minutes longer, his head begins to nod, then slump into the seat, and then he's out again.

Sam's still exhausted, still fighting off the illness, his lungs still rough, his voice still raw. Still sick.

Dean's starting to worry that maybe he's not going to get better.

And this driving in shifts and marathoning it to Bobby's shit? It's not gonna work. How the fuck are they going to get anywhere when Sam is sick and Dean's stomach is eating itself?

Fuck it, they should just stop at a motel somewhere. Dean'll wrestle Sam into bed and go out for tacos. Crunchy tacos, stuffed three-quarters of the way full with greasy, over-seasoned beef, big old flecks of cheese and shreds of lettuce and a fat dollop of sour cream on top.

He'd inhale half the taco in one bite, and all the filling would burst out the back end and down his hand and onto the paper plate, and when he was done with all three (or six) tacos he'd use a fork to eat up everything that fell out, until there was nothing left on his plate but some wilted lettuce and a big grease stain-

God.

Jesus Christ.

So _hungry_.

"Change of plans," Dean says. Sam pops awake again, peering at him from beneath his long, ridiculous bangs. "We're gonna take a detour."

"Uh?"

"I said we're stopping. Do this drive a little slower."

"But you- how are you gonna eat?"

"I got some friends, just a few exits up."

"More friends?" Sam makes a face. "I don't know if I wanna meet any more of your friends."

"Too bad. I'm starving, and you need more rest." To emphasize his resolve, Dean grinds down on the gas. "Couple days in bed, at the _very _least, till you can kick this shit."

"Don't talk to me like that."

"Like what? Like you talk to me?"

Sam's mouth becomes a thin line, and he shakes his head in a scoffy way that makes Dean want to reach over and push him out of the car.

"I'm fine."

"Oh yeah, you're fine."

"What the hell are we doing, Dean?"

Dean shrugs. "Fighting?"

"No. I mean. What are we..." he pauses for a grand sigh. "What are we _doing_?"

"They're just people, okay? Nothing weird. They don't have idea about anything supernatural."

"That's not what I mean. I mean. We're gonna go to Bobby's and then what?"

Dean has been waiting for this conversation. Sure, he'd hoped it wouldn't happen, but he was never stupid enough to believe that Sam was actually going to stay with him.

"Just lemme scrounge up some meds and I can drop you off wherever you want," Dean says. "I'll even drive your ass back to California."

"Dean-"

"You can go back, Sammy. I checked the papers. You're not even wanted for questioning."

"I can't fucking go back. There's no way I can go back, and anyway... just stop, okay? Stop it with that 'I'm stoic and I don't care if you go' shit."

Dean turns his eyes back to road.

"I wanna know what we're doing _now_," Sam continues. "_Here_, together, on the road. I mean, do you even have a doctor in Sioux Falls?"

"Of course I have a doctor in Sioux Falls."

"When's the last time you saw him?"

"Her."

"Her."

It's been a year, at least.

"Six months, maybe," Dean says. "But I was just in the hole two months, Sam."

"And yet you don't have any meds that are actually yours."

"Well I'd love to stop and pick some up. You got a couple thousand dollars I can borrow?"

"Dean I'm just asking... what's the plan here?"

"Stay at Bobby's a week, maybe? You'll rest, I'll see my doctor, stock up on some shit. Then I thought..."

This isn't going to be well-received.

"I thought maybe we could go find the Colt."

"What's the Colt?"

"That thing I was telling you about."

"When?"

"You know. After I busted your skull open at Stanford."

Sam's lip twiches. "So what is it?"

"It's a gun. They say it can kill anything. Like, really anything."

Dean doesn't want or need to see the face Sam's probably making, same face he always goddamn makes: _but Dean you're so sick. Dean don't die. Dean make me feel better about all this_.

"So you're still all about the demon," Sam says darkly. "Blaze of glory. Revenge and being a badass and all that."

"Yeah, I still want to kill the thing that murdered your mother. Fucking sue me."

"Dad left you for dead, Dean."

"Christ. So much for our honeymoon period, huh?"

There's roaring protest on the tip of Sam's tongue, Dean can already hear it. But- and this part so far works in Dean's favor, mostly- Sam considers him extra delicate at the moment, without his medicines. A knock down drag out fight, in Sam's mind, might cause Dean to instantly drop dead. So Sam has to force himself to stay calm, somewhat reasonable.

So with another deep sigh he lets the matter go, for now. Dean knows damn well he'll bring it up again, just as soon as he thinks of an argument more solid than "but Deeeeeannnnnn! You're dyyyyyinggg!" Dean can see him forcibly pushing away the urge.

Sam slumps back into his seat, letting his head fall over the backrest.

And then a subject change. "So how'd you meet her, anyway?"

"My doctor?"

"Em."

Dean shrugs. "The usual way."

"In a bar? She's twenty years older than you."

"Fifteen."

"Dean."

"What?"

"Tell me."

Dean shrugs. "She was my nurse. A long time ago."

"How long ago?"

"Last time I ever stayed on a kiddy ward."

"You're kidding me."

"She was very professional. Didn't lay on a hand on me till I was well over legal age."

"Gross."

"You asked."

Sam rolls his eyes, turning his head out the window. They drive in blessed silence for a few minutes.

There's a definite downside to Sam keeping his mouth shut, though. Like when he turns back, studying Dean with that fucking eagle eye of his, watching him for... Dean doesn't even know. Probably for signs of impending death.

"Will you quit staring at me? I'm fine."

"You look really pale."

Dean grips the steering wheel tight. "How many times I gotta tell you? I am fucking _hungry_."

Before he knows what's happening, the back of Sam's hand is squishing into his cheek, then his forehead. "You feel warm."

Dean is absolutely not getting a fever, but nothing short of a goddamn rectal thermometer is gonna convince Sam any different. "For fuck's sake, Sam. Get _off_ me."

"You have to start telling me when you don't feel well."

"I feel fine."

"What does 'fine' mean?"

"It means I'm gonna live for the rest of the day. Get that fucking look off your face. I'm _fine_."

But Sam's not gonna buy that, not for a second.

"You're warm. You're wheezing."

"So? It's hot and I have a lung disease."

"What the fuck are we gonna do if you get an infection?"

Sam says this last part gazing out the window like he wants to fucking write poetry about it. It's not even a question, and if it is, Sam's only asking one person-himself.

Dean jerks the car off the road, stopping so suddenly that the Impala skids across the gravel, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust, and they both fly forward, restrained only by their seat belts.

"Jesus, Dean. What the hell are you _doing_?" Sam's winding himself for a big fucking lecture, his cheeks are turning pink and everything. Which means the things Dean wants to say? They aren't going to be heard anyway.

So he doesn't bother. He just gets out of the car, into all the goddamn gravel dust, which is just gonna make Sam's phantom wheeze a reality, which makes Dean so mad he can't slam his door hard enough; he has to resist the urge to open it and slam it again.

He marches down the road, no idea where he's going, not that it matters, because wherever the fuck he goes, Sam's going to be nipping at his heels.

"Where the hell are you going, Dean?" Sam shouts, right on cue.

Dean stops because yeah, it's pointless. He digs his inhaler out of his shirt pocket and takes a preemptive hit, then another, and by the time he exhales Sam is by his side.

"What the hell?" Sam repeats.

"We need... we need some rules around here or something."

Sam blinks at him. "Rules?"

"Yeah, like rule number one, get the fuck off my back."

"How about rule number one, give up your fucking suicide missions? Magical guns, Dean? Seriously? You were supposed to die a couple months ago. It is _literally_ a miracle that you are standing here. Can't we... I don't know, go to the Grand Canyon or something? Why does it have to be this? Why does it _always_ have to be this?"

The CF has a rotten sense of humor. When Dean opens his mouth to answer he can feel the gravel dust tickling the back of his throat, getting all up in his nose. He's going to sneeze and then he's going to cough, inhalers be damned, and the sub-par PT the last couple of days means his chest is going to sound awful, and he's not going to be able to talk, to finish what he wants to say, what he needs Sam to know, and even if he can Sam won't be listening. Because all Sam can hear, ever, is the disease.

So again Dean doesn't bother. He sits on the side of the road, hands digging into his scalp, his stomach gnawing away at itself and his fingers trying to curl into fists because god he wants to lay Sam out _so_ bad right now just to have a quiet moment.

Sam sinks down onto the road with him, his hands everywhere. "Hey- what's wrong?"

"This isn't gonna work," Dean pauses to swallow, suppressing the cough as long as he can. "This ain't gonna work, that's what's wrong."

Then he can't hold it back any longer. He draws up his legs, elbows resting on his knees. The air rushes out of him. When the hacking begins, Sam curses like it's the end of the fucking world, runs off somewhere.

He's still coughing and spitting big blobs of mucus between his legs when Sam returns with the concentrator. He's connected the mask to it, rather than the cannula, and Dean doesn't fight when Sam arranges it around his face because maybe if it'll ease the scratch in his throat, placate his lungs a little, maybe he can talk and then maybe, just maybe, Sam will listen.

Dean remembers long ago, when he could have turned blue and flopped around their motel room like a possessed whale carcass without Sam noticing. Those times are gone, and goddamn it, he almost misses them.

Yeah, it sucked being on his own. Sure, he had been afraid something would happen. He had been afraid to die alone.

But when he was alone, at least his body belonged to him. At least he could make decisions about it, choose to tend to it or ignore it, to fight it or to surrender to it.

He doesn't know how to make Sam understand. Sam just lives in his body and his body does what he wants it to and he doesn't have to listen to it or attend to its long, long list of needs and when it isn't working right he just has to lay in bed and drink orange juice and it goes back to normal.

And that's what he seems to think Dean should do, lay in bed and drink orange juice and wait for it to get better. Search for a way to fix it. Treat it nicely in hopes that it will treat him nicely back.

"I'm sputtering on dust," Dean says. "That's all."

"I know. Let's get you back in the car." Sam's hands are sweeping in wide circles across Dean's back as they so often do, in a way that simultaneously makes Dean feel soothed and feeble, both comforted and condescended to. He hates and appreciates it all at once.

"It's fucking dust," Dean says again. "That's all it is. It's _dust_."

A car on the highway slows to a stop, the driver calling "is he okay?" out the window.

"We're fine," Sam calls. "Just fine. Come on, Dean. Up."

"I'm not having this conversation with you again," Dean says, raising his head to look at Sam. "You agreed. You agreed that we were gonna do this."

"That was before I saw you die."

"Then I'm taking you back to California."

"I'm not going back to California."

"Then I'll ditch your ass at Bobby's."

"Fine." Sam's hand falls away from Dean's back. "If your goddamn demon is more important that your own brother-"

"-don't start with that shit. Listen to me, Sam." He pulls the mask off his face because it makes his voice sound tinny and sick and right now he needs to sound strong. But the air outside the mask is hot and dirty and harasses the back of his throat, so he puts it back on.

It's a miracle, but Sam keeps his mouth shut and just studies him, the ridge of his brow casting a shadow over his squinting eyes. He hasn't shaved in a couple of days and his face is stubbly, brown from the sun but shiny from illness and gaunt from weight loss.

Truth is, Dean has no idea what the fuck they're doing, after Bobby's or right now or weeks down the road. He doesn't know what they fuck they're gonna do if he gets sick, if Sam stays sick. He doesn't know what Sam wants or expects from him.

He doesn't know what to do but try to explain, one more fucking time.

"I don't feel sick day to day, Sam," he says, maybe a little hysterically. He points to a place just below his heart. "Right here? Every time I inhale it feels like someone driving a hook between my ribs. Feels like my spine's ripping away from the rest of my body, and my lungs weigh five thousand pounds. But I don't _feel_ sick."

He wishes he could just say that and somehow Sam would understand. But Sam gets that scared little boy look on his face again. "That's exactly my point, Dean. We have to get you-"

"-I always feel it, but I don't think about it. I don't think about it and that's almost the same as not feeling it. Sometimes it gets bad and then I feel it. But a lotta times it doesn't, and I don't."

Sam's eyebrows raise. "What do you... what does that...?"

"I'm saying... I'm saying you won't ever let me ignore it. You _make_ me feel it. And _that_ makes me feel like a Sick Person, Sam. _That_ makes me feel like a Dying Person. Not the disease. You."

Sam mulls this over, his eyes darting back and forth across the dirt. But he's not present, he's somewhere else and Dean can guess where- in Boise, watching Dean die over and over and over and that's all he can see, all he can hear.

"If we could just find you a healer. Em-"

"-fucking forget about Em. I'm gonna kill that bitch just for putting the idea in your head. She can't do shit, do you understand me?"

"I don't get it, Dean," Sam says. "I don't understand why you don't wanna get better."

"Because I'm fine, Sam. Because I don't wanna waste whatever time I got left chasing some bullshit fantasy."

Sam shakes his head. He wipes his eyes and smears dirt across his skinny, pale face.

They're a mess.

"Yeah," Sam says, "you'd rather waste it chasing some bullshit revenge."

It's pointless. Dean hefts himself from the ground and walks back to the Impala, Sam's footsteps heavy behind him. He tosses Sam the car keys and curls himself in the passenger seat. He doesn't bother to remove the mask because for the first time all day, he can barely breathe.

:::

To be continued.

Dudes... I am SO SORRY that I'm so behind answering comments! The RL stuff, it is madness. But thank you all so much for your kind words, and you'll be hearing from me soon :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Note:** BAH I can't believe it took me an entire month to update. I was moving, though, and now I'm moved. So the next update should not take so long. I am sorry.

**PART FOUR**

Sam not sure what he assumed his brother did while he was away at Stanford. When he thought of it at all, he thought of it like a series of postcards- Dean frozen forever shooting a gun in a falling-down house. Dean frozen forever in front of the TV during treatments. Dean frozen forever in the middle of an obedient nod while Dad barked forever-frozen orders. Until now, Sam had been content to leave the blanks blank.

Dean marks a tiny square of map with an X and says _drive there_. Then he pouts into his oxygen mask and refuses to say anything about his friends RJ and Julia for the rest of the drive, except that they're civilians and they're married and they have enzymes. Sam wants to scream _what's with all the fucking friends_but doesn't, because he doesn't have a right to, because while he was gone, Dean would've needed to places to go and people to turn to, wouldn't he?

RJ and Julia's house looks like Bobby's, only with shrubs and overgrowth instead of cars. Harry Potter sheets tacked over the basement windows, beer cans lined up on the porch railing, a rusty bicycle strangled by grass and blackberry bushes in the front yard.

When they get out of the car Sam is suddenly so nervous he almost feels faint, his heartbeat skittering up and down his throat.

He doesn't want to answer to anyone who's only heard Dean's side of the story, not again. The sob story that's kept him going for nearly four years- it seems so weak now, so selfish. He imagines their introductions, _this is my brother Sam, he makes me feel sick and when he ran away to college? He pretended I was dead. Tried to wipe me right off the face of the earth, didn't you Sammy?_

At first there's no answer when Dean knocks. Sam is flooded with relief, and turns to go get back in the car and high tail it to Bobby's, but Dean sits down hard on the top step, rubs at his stomach, cursing a blues steak.

"Fuck, Sam. I'm so _fucking_hungry. I'm gonna fucking break in, I don't give a fuck I'm gonna break the fuck in."

Then a woman comes around the corner of the house. She looks to be in her early thirties, has no less than three lip piercings and one of those bodies that Jess would smack him upside the head for describing as "bigger" or "chunky." She calls Dean a motherfucker and hugs him like he's a son returning from war, so hard his feet leave the ground. Then they kiss on the lips like grandma and grandchild.

She introduces herself to Sam as Julia, says "it's nice to finally fucking meet you" and crushes him in a hug that forces a wheeze from his chest.

"Come on around back, food's almost done," she says. "You boys look hungry."

Dean practically moans with relief and runs around the side of the house. Julia leads Sam in the same direction by the small of his back, apologizes for the state of the yard and doesn't stop talking about anything and everything and nothing until they're in the back yard, where three or four men stand around a barbecue, pointing their beers at the feeble flame over the briquettes, obviously in the middle of a good-natured argument about how to keep them burning.

Julia points out a table of food, a wading pool full of ice and beer, introduces him to a few people sitting around a fire, who smile and wave. Then she disappears inside the house, leaving him standing in the corner of the yard, frozen and still ridiculously nervous.

He spots Dean near the barbecue, talking to a man who's arms are sleeved in tattoos, earlobes stretched out so big you could fit a bottle cap in each one. Sam can't tell which story Dean is telling, but it must be a hilarious one because Dean's arms are gesturing wildly and the man's face is beet red with laughter and he's bent over clutching his knees.

Someone pushes a bottle of beer into his hand. He looks down, a girl who can't be more than five feet tall is batting her eyelashes at him. He can't hear what she's saying over the roar in his own ears.

She's cute as a button, probably exactly his age, too short for anything long term but maybe in a different life-

He thinks of Jess. Even in the short time he's been away from her, everything that wasn't so perfect about their relationship has melted away and she's a goddess now, perfect in every way.

And gone.

"Where's the bathroom?" He says to girl, hoping he isn't screaming.

She scowls for a moment- he cut her off mid-sentence- but checks herself and points toward a sliding glass door off the deck. He leans way down and she says in his ear, "through the dining room, turn right, at the end of the hall."

He hears Dean calling his name but ignores it, because his head is starting to ache and he has to get in the house, away from people, into silence.

It's dim and cool inside, way too much furniture and cluttered but cozy. He immediately feels comfortable, is able to take a breath and relax his shoulders.

On his way to the bathroom he passes a large machine with alien-like tubes, a vest in an easy chair. Inhalers on the bar between the kitchen and living room. In the bathroom, pill bottles of various sizes and heights crowding half the modest counter space.

Someone who lives here has CF.

He's almost annoyed that Dean didn't bother to mention this. He'd assumed they were visiting another scary nurse, a nursing assistant or a hospital janitor or a pharmacy tech.

He pisses, washes his hands and paws around in the medicine cabinet. More pill bottles, random tubing, a package of disposable needles. Whoever has CF must also be diabetic, which is pretty common- it's a fucking miracle Dean hasn't developed it yet.

Sam's mind begins to scheme. All this shit they so desperately need, anti-inflammatories and steroids and allergy pills.

The scariest part of Dean being out of meds is having no antibiotics. All the snot makes his lungs like an incubator for any and all bacteria, including varieties that could kill him astonishingly fast. But the inhaled stuff needs to be kept cold, so if Sam could find an excuse to rummage through their fridge-

No. He doesn't even know the situation here, if Dean steals medication from this couple or if they give it to him willingly. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

Sam's not sure it even matters to him. These people have a steady address and jobs and health insurance. They can always get more.

But then, Bobby's practically made it a career to stockpile meds for Dean, and goddamn it, they aren't that far away.

Sam leaves the bathroom, back down the hall, across the living room, through the dining room. Julia is standing at the stove with a whisk in her hand and a cordless phone at her ear.

"Trust me, ma, I been whipping this shit all fucking day," she's saying, "Been through a motherfucking dozen eggs and fucking _nothing_."

She sees him, gives him a matronly wink.

Sam goes back through the sliding glass door, into the backyard and doesn't allow himself a second glance at the fridge.

Dean hooks him around the neck as soon as he steps outside. "This is Sammy."

"Sam," Sam clarifies to the tattooed guy with the giant earlobes. He extends his hand, but RJ pulls him into a straight-jacket embrace that hurts even worse than Julia's.

"The Stanford man! I'm RJ." He elbows Dean. "Man, you really got the shit end of the stick. This guy's a mountain."

"True. But I'm _way_ better looking."

"Uh huh," Sam says, and shakes RJ's hand, despite the hug, as an excuse to get a better look at him. He just looks like some dude. Some dude who needs to shave. No evidence of illness. Unlike Dean, whose chest always seems to be heaving, his crackling breath audible even now, from where Sam is standing.

Maybe Julia then. She steps outside just as he thinks of it, and shrugs at RJ, shaking her head. "I give up on that meringue shit, babe. You're gonna have to be happy with cake out of a box."

"Cake out of a box sounds awesome," Dean says ravenously.

"I bet. Here," Julia tosses Dean what Sam recognizes as a bottle of enzymes. "You keep those."

She seems a little...overweight... to have CF, but stranger things have happened. Not all CFers have a problem with digestion and absorbing calories. And her voice is low and a little hoarse. And the enzymes.

Julia. He puts his money on Julia.

"Burgers up," a guy who looks like he could be RJ's twin calls from the barbecue.

There's a rush to the burgers heaped on the table, and then Sam and Dean are standing alone on the deck. Dean brings the bottle of enzymes to his mouth and throws them down his throat like Tic Tacs.

"RJ," he says.

"Huh?"

"I can see your wheels spinning. It's RJ."

"It's RJ what?" Sam says, but he knows he's caught.

He can't resist looking over at Dean's friend now that the he knows. The guy's shoving a burger patty whole into his mouth with one hand and squirting mustard on a bun with the other. He's on the thin side, but vaguely muscled and not the skinny by any stretch of the imagination. Bronze in the sun. The shirt he wears is so old the decal has mostly peeled away; Sam can't even tell what band it is.

The five-foot woman from earlier walks by, and RJ snatches the beer right from her hand, taking a long swig. She bats at him, shrieking for her beer, which he holds over his head, smiling with bulging cheeks. Julia comes by with a platter of sliced cheese and elbows RJ in the stomach, gently, but hard enough that he swallows abruptly, doubles over and begins to choke, beer dripping down his chin.

But fuck, even that sounds healthy enough, maybe a little congested, maybe a little too rough.

He's still choking a couple minutes later when Julia finishes constructing her burger, which is fucking mountainous, two or three of everything. She bends over him, sliding her hands across his shoulders.

"How's your burger, baby? Taste good?"

"Excellent," he chokes.

"If you're gonna barf, walk a little this way."

"Bitch."

"Serves you fucking right," she says loudly. "Aaron honey, get your fucking brother some water, will you?"

"Let him choke," a guy who was manning the barbecue answers, but he sets his food down and jogs into the house.

"Dad let you have a sleepover with Aaron once, you remember?" Dean mutters close to Sam's ear. "He has CF too."

Sam tries to shuffle through some memories, but it's too much right now. Makes his head hurt.

"Here, hun," Julia calls to Dean, holding the giant burger aloft.

Dean practically tackles her, tearing into the burger where he stands. Someone pulls up a chair for him, but he doesn't notice. Grease drips down his hands as he inhales the burger in two or three bites, chewing with his mouth open just to get it to fit.

"Come eat, Sam," he garbles, or at least that's what Sam thinks he says.

Sam's not hungry, though, not in the slightest. The dull ache he's been carrying in his head is getting worse as the sun beats down. His mouth is dry and slimey.

Like some kind of mind reader (god Sam hopes not) Julia presses a bottle of water into his hand. "We got a spare bedroom if you wanna lay down, sweetie."

Instead he sags onto the steps leading up to the deck, leans against the railing and gulps at the water, which is icy cold and marginally soothing.

Something sharp barrels through his head, quick and stinging.

And then again. His stomach rolls with nausea.

Something is wrong.

He must black out for a moment, because suddenly his face is in his trembling hands, which are slick with sweat, and Dean is sitting close. Everything- the loud talking, the laughing- is quiet now. He can hear the fire in the corner of the yard, crackling.

"Sammy," Dean says, voice low, "Why don't you go in and lay down, huh? You don't look so good."

Pain is pressing down on his eyeballs. He doesn't want to move. But everyone's staring at him, he can feel it. So he nods, just barely.

Then there are several pairs on hands on him.

"No no no," he hears Dean say calmly, "I got him."

They're halfway down the hall when the pain in Sam's head grows sharper. He recognizes it this time, even before the other world starts to splice into this one.

"Happening again," he says, digging his nails into Dean's arm. "It's happening again."

"Your fever's back, Sammy, that's all."

"No. No it's-" and then the pain is full force, claws scooping out his brain, pain that travels down his shoulders, into his gut, squeezing squeezing squeezing. He can't speak anymore, can't see, there his vision slats into two things at once, and he has no choice but to let it come.

He smells the hospital before he sees it, that weird metallic glue smell, hints of sick and mucus. And then here he is, in a wide, sterile hallway. He can still feel Dean's arms around him in the other world, the vibration of his chest as he pants under Sam's weight. It's almost enough to pull him back. Almost.

At first he thinks he's at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center again, and goddamn it he doesn't want to be here, can't stand the thought of watching Dean die twice.

But the walls are a different color. The nurses who pass by without seeing him are all in brightly colored scrubs, teddy bears and trucks and butterflies and smiling sunshines end over end on their tops and bottoms.

It's a pediatrics ward.

He picks out his brother's voice quickly among all the other noise- it's not his adult voice, exactly, but his post-pubescent voice, that's for sure, he's well into teenager-hood, almost a man. Sam follows the sound, just a couple of doors down.

There Dean is, sitting in bed in pajama bottoms and a tee-shirt, an outfit Sam hasn't seen years.

He doesn't look as bad, as sick or as thin or as pale, as Sam remembers.

A younger RJ sits cross-legged in a plastic chair near Dean's bed, examining some playing cards spread out in his fingers. He's younger, of course, clean of tattoos, his earlobes pierced but tiny.

"Seriously?" He's saying. "Maybe he forgot. You got any threes?"

Dean drops the hand with the cards in his lap. "He didn't fucking forget. He just doesn't care. We aren't really playing Go Fish, are we?"

"I'm not playing fucking poker with you anymore, man."

Dean smirks, and drop two cards on the bed. "There, you party pooping bastard."

"Seriously, though. The way you talk about him... doesn't seem like he'd just take off."

"Well that's Sam for you. Gimme your fours."

"I don't have any fours."

"Yeah you do. You have two."

RJ flicks his cards over his shoulder, where they scatter on the floor. "Fuck this, man. Watching TV, that's all we're doing from now on."

"Look at this mess," says a woman's voice behind Sam. It's unmistakably Em, her odd, clipped accent. She stops at his shoulder. Her scrubs are covered with smiling daises and she's got pie box under one arm. Her face is much younger, her hair less wild.

"Like two pigs in shit, eh?" She says fondly.

"What kinda pie?" RJ cranes his neck, eyeballing the box.

"It's eighteen and over pie. For patients who aren't diabetic and who follow isolation rules." She turns a stern eye on Dean. "What have I told you about having guests? It's dangerous, yes?"

"But I want pie." RJ smiles like he isn't listening and could care less what Em's saying, never taking his eye off the box.

But Dean, Dean doesn't smile at all. "Has anyone heard from my dad, Em?"

Em shakes her head, lips tight. Sam's seen the look a million times on a million faces: she doesn't like John Winchester any more than he does. He almost likes her for it. Almost.

She looks regretfully at the pie box. A forced smile spreads over her face. "Alright. Pie for everyone."

"YES!" RJ says with a triumphant fist pump, and Dean smiles halfheartedly.

The two boys hover as Em slices into it with a plastic knife. Cherry. She cuts a sliver for RJ, much to his chagrin, a small slice for herself, then plants a fork in the rest of it and hands it to Dean.

"Happy birthday, Dean," she says. "RJ, take your pie to your own room, please. And hide it from Angela."

"Aw, Em-"

"Go, my dear."

RJ and Dean knock knuckles and say goodbye.

"Did you think about our discussion?" Em says to Dean once the other boy is gone.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"No. I don't want to do it."

"You could have years, Dean."

"But then Sammy..."

"What will happen will happen."

Dean mashes the cherries with his fork. He brings a mound halfway to his mouth, then stops. "No. I don't want to."

If Em is disappointed, she doesn't show it. In fact she nearly looks happy. "You are wiser than most, my dear."

"Can you do me a favor, though?"

"Anything."

"If I... if I get too sick before the thing that killed my mom is dead...?"

"Of course, my dear. Just enough."

The world begins to shift again. Sam can still see the hospital but feels the warm, heavy sensation of a blanket thrown over his body, sweat droplets on his forehead, a hand wiping them away.

The pain spikes, the light blurs, Dean- and Em- shaped blobs fading away before him.

He thinks about Dean almost like he's being forced to. Dean's earnest face as he says_you make me sick_. The difference between the emaciated Gollum-like creature from Sam's childhood memories and the way Dean actually looked. How he can't pick a CF-er out of a crowd and how maybe, if Dean weren't his brother, if he didn't fixate on his every labored breath, maybe he couldn't pick him out either.

Someone is saying his name over and over. All he can do is groan.

OOOO

She lets the phone ring a few times before she answers. She likes to pretend sometimes that she doesn't know when it will ring. She likes to pretend it's not pointless to have a ringer at all.

People think being psychic means seeing the future. Not really. It's more like very few things are ever new, very few things are a surprise. You just know what you know, like you've always known it, whether you want to or not.

"Dean," she says into the receiver.

"Em," he answers. "Emmy. You have to stop."

"It's out of my hands."

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm a glorified palm reader, my dear. Miss Cleo up against God. Nothing I can do. It's your brother's power, not mine."

"English, Em."

She can feel the pain returning to her head. "I'm not projecting. He's extracting, Dean. He's pulling it out of me. I can't stop him."

"How?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you fucking do."

"It would be pointless to tell you."

"That whole Sam destroying the universe thing again, huh?"

"Yes."

"You're sick, Em."

She can't resist a smile. "You're one to talk, my dear."

"You're insane."

"I wish that were true."

"You've done a lot for me, Em, and I... but if you keeping fucking with my brother? You know what I gotta do."

"Of course. You must protect your precious Sammy, mustn't you."

"I'll kill you, Emmy. I'll find you, and I'll kill you." He pauses.

She doesn't know what he's going to say next, and that fills her her whole body with excitement, an explosion like expensive candy in her mouth.

"Don't make me," he says, and his voice cracks. "Please. Just stop."

"I told you, my dear. I can't."

"Don't think I won't do it, Em. I'll kill you."

"Indeed," Em says, and hangs up.

::::

To be continued.


	5. Chapter 5

Note: I don't even know what to say about how long this update took. Besides "I'm sorry." Cause I am. Very :( And since it's been so long, have a not-very-brief recap:

RECAP, CHAPTERS 1 - 4

Sam and Dean flee Stanford and head toward Bobby's. Thanks to Sam's post-ghost-possession illness, Dean's out much of the medication he needs to manage his CF. And they don't make it very far before Sam gets a terrible fever and headache.

Terribly worried, Dean takes Sam to his friend Em's. Em doesn't seem to like Sam very much. She calls him names and very cryptically warns him not to find Dean a healer. She seems to think that Sam is going to do something incredibly terrible and/or stupid. It doesn't take Sam long to figure out that she's some kind of psychic. Also? Something's up with Dean. Not only does he look healthier than usual, but he manages to eat bacon without the enzymes he needs to digest food. Sam passes out before he can start asking questions, and ends up in a motel room alone with Dean.

Then Sam gets a terrible headache and has his very first vision. But it's not the future, it's the past- the time Dean came very close to death after Dad ditched him in Boise, which was shortly before Dean showed up at Stanford in Because of Houdini.

Em is in the vision, and she places her hand on Dean's chest and tells him "you can breathe." Which seems to prevent Dean from dying.

When Sam comes to, Dean admits that Em can temporarily relieve his symptoms but insists that it's nothing more than a parlor trick. Dean thinks Em is behind the vision, and is pissed about it. But he insists that Em is harmless, that being psychic is psychologically damaging but that she can't do any real harm.

Sam is deeply effected by the image of Dean on his deathbed, and starts to become even more overbearing and adamant about finding Dean a healer. Dean is just as adamant about not finding a healer. He tells Sam the truth about why Em hates him: Em thinks some crazy shit's gonna happen, that Dean will be healed and ultimately sell his soul and that Sam is going to somehow destroy the world. What a loon. Sam and Dean both thinks that's wacky.

So they keep driving. Now that's Em's influence has worn off, Dean can't eat and is absolutely fucking starving. They have the same argument they always have- Dean wants to hunt, Sam wants him to take care of himself.

They make a pit stop to see his old friend and fellow CFer, RJ, who's wife is happy to provide him with medication and food. There, Sam gets another headache and has another vision. This time it's of a teenage Dean and RJ in the hospital. Em is there too. It's Dean's birthday and he's alone, because Sam has apparently run away and Dad has gone chasing after him. Over birthday pie, Em has a very cryptic conversation with Dean, where she seems to want an answer to some proposition she's made to him. Something about his illness, probably. Whatever it is, Dean says no, he doesn't want to do it.

And finally, at the end of chapter four, Em gets a call from Dean. Dean demands she stop giving Sam visions, or else. Em says that she's not giving Sam visions, that he's pulling them out of her. "I'm Miss Cleo up against God," she says. Dean swears he'll kill her if the visions don't stop. "Indeed," Em says, and hangs up.

PART FIVE

A month before Sam left for Stanford, Dad opened his bedroom door and turned on the light, waking him from a dead sleep.

"Sam get up," Dad said, "Dean's sick." And then he was gone again.

Sam turned over, groaned, and sat for a minute on the edge of the bed.

There was never a time, when Dean was sick, that Sam's heart didn't ache and his stomach didn't turn over and his heart rate didn't speed up. But as he sat there rubbing his eyes, his brain screamed at him to go the fuck back to sleep and he thought, as he always did, _goddamn it not again. Not again._

After a while he sighed and got up and followed the sound of his brother's high, harsh wheezing into the kitchen.

Dean was at the table before a steaming cup of coffee, but he wasn't drinking it, he had his head tilted upward and he was staring at the light on the ceiling and breathing like breathing was fighting. Dad had thrown a blanket over his shoulders, placed his hospital duffel at his feet, and he had one hand curled loosely around the strap of the bag like a child waiting to go to summer camp, face pink and eyes dull and wet with fever.

Dad was pacing back and forth in front of the stove, phone between his ear and shoulder. "Hold on a minute, Caleb." He tossed the keys at Sam. "There's money in the glovebox. I'll be by tomorrow morning before I head out." Then he resumed his pacing.

Sam leaned down, pressed his hand to the side of Dean's head and wasn't at all surprised to find it burning. The cords of his neck were straining with each breath.

Sam threw his father an a accusatory glance. "Did you try to get him to take anything?"

"Hold- Caleb, hold- hold on just a minute." Dad covered the receiver and glared at Sam in a can't-you-see-I'm-busy way. "Said he didn't want anything."

"So he grunted and it sounded like 'no'?"

Sam tried to say it caustically but there was no heat behind his words.

"Come on, dude," he said to Dean. "Let's go."

Dean stared into his coffee. No sound came out of his mouth, but he mouthed the word 'where?'

"Hospital. You're sick, you gotta go."

Dean shook his head no but struggled to stand up, got tangled in the blanket and sat down again. His eyes rolled around, pointing in the general direction of the floor because he wasn't really conscious anymore, his fever had climbed too high.

Sam hooked Dean's arm around his shoulder and they begin the slow journey to the car, stopping once to let Dean to catch his breath. He was fiery hot, gunky-chested but thankfully not coughing- Sam was never in the mood to deal with delirious cough-vomit-gagging.

"I hope they give us a room with a window bed. If I have to sleep in one of those goddamn four-foot cots, I'm not gonna be very happy," Sam said, and Dean answered with garbled almost-talking noises that Sam didn't bother to decipher.

They came to the car, and Sam guided his brother into the driver's seat and scooted him over just enough to get in the car himself. Dean leaned heavily against him, pushing him against the driver's side door and making noises of delirious protest when Sam moved his arm to reach the gear shift.

"Personal space, Dean," Sam said with a smile, but of course the lame little joke was lost on his brother.

"I know you don't mind if I drop you off," Sam continued, "But Jesus, man, the way you sound when you call me in the morning? Not worth it. You don't like it. I know you don't like it. But what am I supposed to do sometimes, huh? What are we supposed to do? I can't always be there in the morning, Dean."

At the hospital there were heavy antibiotics that made Dean puke most of the night. Sam usually let the nurses deal with the barf but that night he stayed and held the basin under his brother's mouth, and couldn't fucking stop himself from talking.

"You can't wait until it gets this bad," he said as Dean was retching. "I'm gonna be busy sometimes, Dean. College is hard. It's gonna take up a lot of my time. You're gonna die, if you keep doing this."

Dean heaved a final time, and groaned, and let his sweaty forehead fall into the crook of Sam's arm, like he always did to say _shut up. Can't you see I'm miserable?_

"Came on quick," he said aloud. "Sammy..."

"You should try to get a little sleep, Dean." Sam smoothed down the hair on the back of Dean's head, poured him another glass of water and handed him the cup and straw. "Before you start harfing again."

"I don't wanna die in some apartment, Sammy."

"You'll be fine, Dean."

"I don't wanna die in some apartment."

"Just try it. You don't like it, I'll sneak you into my dorm."

"I don't wanna work at WalMart."

"We'll find someone to let you work on cars."

"I don't want to work on cars, Sam."

Sam went to the bathroom and dump the puke in the toilet, rinsed out the basin in the tub. "You won't have to work at WalMart, okay, because your ADA lawyer brother is gonna scare someone into giving you whatever job you want."

Dean snorted. "You mean my eighteen-year-old pre-law brother?"

"I'll by a new suit. Grow a beard."

Sam smiled but Dean didn't. He squirmed in bed for a moment, like he was thinking about getting up and changed his mind. "I already have a job, Sam."

Sam shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, dude. Not anymore."

Dean brought his hand down hard on the bed railing. He was breathing hard and at the top of his chest. _He needs another neb_, Sam thought fleetingly.

"He'll never let me go with him, if you take me to Stanford. I'll never see him again."

Sam sat down in his chair slowly, studying Dean, wondering if maybe he was delirious again. "What are you saying?"

"You gotta tell Dad you don't want me to go to Stanford with you."

Sam shook his head. "You're coming with me. He can barely take care of you."

"I'll take care of myself," Dean says venomously, and right on time, like a cruel joke, he heaves a couple of times, then vomits into the basin.

"Rest, Dean," Sam says when he's finished.

"I'll die if I have to sit around in some apartment all day."

Sam sighs. "What do you want me to say? You're just gonna have to find something _else_that makes you happy-"

It was the same argument they've been having ever since.

That night Sam and Dean fought so loudly that the nurses came in and told Sam he needed to leave.

And then there was the big fight with Dad. For some reason, the night before Sam left for Stanford, he opened his mouth and what came out was "Dean's not coming with me." And he couldn't bring himself to backpedal because maybe deep down, that was what he wanted.

On his way out the door, he looked at Dean, and Dean's face said it all: he didn't want to go with Sam but hadn't counted on being left behind, either.

But Dean couldn't have it both ways, and Sam couldn't have it both ways and Dad sure as hell couldn't have it both ways.

So yeah, Sam ran. But that wasn't his big mistake.

His big mistake was never looking back.

OOOO

Dean hangs up the phone with Em, and his hands are shaking.

Sam's fitfully unconscious now. Outside that chattering grows louder as the people grow drunker. He can hear RJ, always decibels louder than everyone else, laughing like just existing is the funniest goddamn thing in the universe.

The whistle in Sam's chest becomes a rattle and he chokes in his sleep. "Gimme your fours," he mutters.

Dean doesn't even want to know.

After a while there's a gentle knock on the door and Julia pokes her head inside. "We're doing breathing treatments, babe."

Dean has to smile a little. She never offers it as an option, no, it's breathing treatment time and that's it. He glances back at Sam. "He's pretty sick."

"So get outta here and let him fucking sleep." She comes to the bed and nudges Dean's shoulder. "I'll get him something for that rattle. Come on."

She's holding out her hand. He takes it and gets to his feet, following her into the living room. RJ and Aaron are on the couch, staring over their nebs at the TV, mashing on video game controllers. Through the glass door, the voices of the guests swell and fall.

"Houshyer brother?" RJ says around the mouthpiece.

"He'll be fine."

"I got one more clean neb if you don't wanna go to your car," Julia says. "You look like you wanna fall over."

The answer must be on his face, because Julia guides him to the easy chair and sits him down, and after a moment hands him an already steaming mouthpiece. RJ holds up a third game controller; Dean shakes his head no.

Then he must have fallen asleep because he blinks and RJ and Aaron and Julia are gone, the whole house is dark and the party is over.

He finds Julia in the bedroom taking Sam's temperature. She looks down at the reading, turns and raises both eyebrows at Dean. "Either this fucking thing's broken or your brother's about to burst into flame."

"It's fine," Dean says automatically, nudging her out of the way and gathering his brother from the bed. "Don't worry about it. We gotta go. Sammy. Wake up."

"He's not waking up. Not with that temperature. He needs a hospital."

"Yeah. Yeah, we're going." Dean grunts under his brother's weight. Whatever the reading was it's probably accurate; Sam is so hot Dean feels like someone's wrapped him in tinfoil and shoved him in the oven.

Enough fucking around.

"We gotta go," he repeats. He gets halfway down the hall before his knees start to buckle. He's about to drag Sam the rest of the way when RJ appears from nowhere to pick up his legs. They tuck him in the backseat of the car and Dean piles blankets over him.

"Don't disappear so long," Julia says, crushing him in her arms. She pushes a bag at him, a bag that Dean bets is stuffed with medication. "Keep in touch."

"I will," Dean says. "You... you guys have always been way too fucking nice."

They look at him like they do every single time he drives away, like maybe it's the last time they're ever going to see him.

Who knows. Maybe this time it is. He gives a final wave and points the car toward Bobby's.

OOOO

Sam groans every once in a while, just to let Dean know he's still alive. The rumble of the road beneath his back is soothing so he concentrates on that, and after a while the pain flows out of his head.

"We're about an hour away, Groanie," Dean says. "You wanna come up front?"

Truth is Sam never wants to sit up ever again, but it'll be easier to breathe if he does, so he manages to whimper a yes.

Dean pulls to the side of the road. The door opens and Dean takes Sam around the armpits and pulls him out of the car and to his feet. He sways for a moment, almost positive he's going to puke on his brother's shoes.

"Did you have PT?" he says, if only to distract himself.

Dean chuckles. "Why? You gonna do it?"

Somehow they make it to the passenger seat. Dean guides Sam in with him, and scoots to the driver's side.

Sam sinks into the backrest. Feels like he's been hit by a truck.

"Take your temperature, will you? You were off the fucking grid earlier."

"I'm fine."

Dean snorts bitterly. "Yeah, okay."

It's a long time before either one of them says anything else. Sam can't seem to keep himself from nodding off; Dean taps the steering wheel nervously.

"So that was a bad one," Dean finally says.

"Yeah."

"What did you see?"

"You. RJ. Her. What did she want you to do, Dean?"

He hears Dean swallow audibly. "It's taken care of, Sam. Okay? She's not gonna fuck with you anymore."

"What did she want you to do?"

"Nothing, Sammy. Nothin'."

"Don't-" Sam struggles to sit up straight. "Don't fucking lie to me. She can heal you, can't she? And you said no."

"She can't heal me."

"Dean-"

"-Listen to me, Sam, damn it. She's a fucking circus act. It's all tricks."

"But-"

"She can tell my body I don't have the disease. But it doesn't go away. There's no telling what the fuck will happen."

"But-"

"I could be healthy for a few days and then drop dead. There's no way to tell."

Sam sniffs. "If you don't let her do it, I can tell you for sure what's going to happen."

"Go the fuck back to sleep."

"All she'd have to do is tell your body again, Dean. It could go on for years."

"And then what? I go running to her every time I start dying. I'd owe her something."

"So what? She's your friend, isn't she?"

"Look what she's doing to you, Sammy. That seem like a woman you can trust?"

Sam doesn't have an answer for that.

Dean leans over the steering wheel and coughs for several minutes.

"Don't swallow it." Sam fumbles through the garbage on the floor for a bottle or something else to spit in. "Dean don't- gross. Dude. Gross."

Dean smacks his lips like his mucus tastes like fine cuisine.

"Fucking gross," Sam repeats.

Dean points at the glovebox. "Hand me the thing in there. There's some shit in that bag. Load it up for me. "

"You're not doing a neb while you're driving."

"That's exactly the thing." Dean reaches over and opens the glovebox, sending an avalanche of shit spewing onto Sam's lap. "If we're gonna do this together, we're gonna have to establish some rules."

"Like what?"

"If I want to do a neb while I drive, that's my fucking business. If I want to swallow my own lung butter? _My_ fucking business."

Sam nods curtly. "Fine. You know what? Fine." He starts rummaging through the pile of shit on his lap, picking out the pieces of the neb to assemble it. "Fine. Rule number two. I'll leave you alone if you let me know when you're sick. Before it becomes an emergency."

"Rule number three," Dean pauses briefly to half-cough, half clear his throat. "You can't bitch at me for drinking beer. Or for playing pool, or for trying to fuck a girl, or for not washing my hands every five fucking minutes. Fuck it, rule number three, you're not my fucking mommy."

"Rule number four!" Sam cries, "You have to take care of yourself. That doesn't include drinking."

"Drinking is for my mental health."

"Bull_shit_."

"Rule number five. _I_ decide when I need my chest cleared. Screw your schedule."

"No. No- fuck no. Because you forget, Dean. And you let that shit stew in there and you make yourself sick. See rule number two."

Sam plugs the neb in the cigarette lighter and flips it on, reluctantly handing it to Dean, who snatches it testily from him. "I'm not a little kid anymore, Sam. I know better now. Gimme a chance."

"If you get sick-"

"I can do everything perfect and I'm still gonna get sick. You need to fucking accept it."

Sam leans back with a sigh.

He can't do this. He really fucking can't. His lungs hurt, his head hurts, everything hurts, he's going to lose Dean, he's homeless now, he's the world's shittiest brother...

"Can we talk about this later?" he says.

Dean coughs around the neb. He takes it out of his mouth which means hell no, they can't talk about it later. "Most important rule. Number six. In fact this should be number one. In fact fuck all the other rules, this is the only one we need. You gotta treat me like I'm... you gotta treat me like I'm normal."

Dean looks over and Sam sees that one of his eyes is red and shiny and thick-looking like a puddle of horror movie blood.

"What the hell happened to your eye?"

"I thought we just established that was none of your fucking business."

"What, so you never have to tell me anything ever again?"

"Try asking me in a different tone."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Oh hey. Your eye's all red. How about that."

"Broke some blood vessels coughing or something."

"Imagine that," Sam says. "You never agreed to rule number two."

"What was it?"

"Rule number two. You have to let me know when you're sick."

Dean grins bitterly. "I'm sick, Sam. Chronically ill, even. I know because you remind me ten times a day."

Sam pauses, sighs. "You know what I mean."

The smile falls from Dean's face. "When have you ever given me a chance to lie about it, huh?"

"Since now."

Dean considers it, then shrugs. "Fine."

Sam nods. "I have one more question. Can I ask one more question?"

"Fine."

"Be honest with me. Are you supposed to be on oxygen all the time?"

"No."

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying. Dad started making me use it. He ripped it off from somewhere."

"Why?"

"Dunno. Maybe he saw it in a movie."

"Bullshit. Why'd he do it?"

"I was just home from an infection..." Dean snorts a little laugh. "He said I sounded like a dying striga."

"Your breathing was interrupting his beauty rest, in other words."

"Rule number... whatever. Stop talking about Dad like he's Satan."

"That's not an acceptable rule."

"Who says?"

"It has nothing to do anything."

"Yeah it does."

"We're talking about the CF, Dean. Something Dad obviously doesn't give a shit about."

"You just broke a rule."

"I never agreed to it."

"Fine. Then I don't agree either."

"To what?"

"To... whatever. None of it."

"You're being a baby."

"You're being an asshole."

"Does it help you?" Sam says. "Tell the truth."

"Does what help me?"

"The oxygen."

"I'm not carrying that shit around all the time, Sam. No. I don't need it unless I'm sleeping. Besides, did we not just establish that that's none of your fucking business?"

"Fine. No oxygen." Sam swallows hard. "Rule number- what number were we on?"

"Uh... seven. I think."

"Seven."

"Eight."

"Well... it's rule number two part B, actually."

"Two part B? Seriously? Should we have these typed up and laminated?"

"Two part B," Sam repeats pointedly. "Stop acting like you don't appreciate the help I give you."

Dean's face goes blank. He shifts uncomfortably. "What. You want a dozen roses?"

"No. No, Dean, I'm not asking- I'm not even asking for a thank you, here. All I'm asking is that you stop pretending like... like it's something you could completely ignore if I didn't bring it up all the time."

Dean puts the neb back in his mouth and says nothing. He pushes the gas, though they're already fifteen over the speed limit.

But Sam presses forward. "I understand, you don't want to think about it twenty-four hours a day. I get it. And I'll try to stop nagging you, okay? But what I mean is... I know you..."

Sam pauses, knowing he has to choose his words carefully. But the truth is, he doesn't really have the words.

"You don't need to pretend you hate it. Me. My help."

But Sam can tell by the way Dean's staring straight out the window that the conversation is over.

"Nevermind," he says feebly. "Nevermind."

They drive, Sam stuffing shit back into the glove box, Dean breathing evenly with his neb. He slows down as his anger melts away, soon they're only mildly speeding.

Sam should give his brother some peace every once in a while. He knows this. But sometimes it's like he can't stop himself.

He really can't stop himself.

"So," he says. "About Em."

"Jesus Christ."

"I'm just saying that maybe it wouldn't hurt to try. Or at least find out more about what she can do."

"Sam," Dean says sharply. The neb has stopped steaming by now; Dean tosses it in Sam's lap. "I just want to do something worthwhile before I kick it. Why is that so fucking hard for you to understand?"

And around and around and around they go.

Sam decides not to start the cycle again, not this time. He turns and stares out the window.

OOOO

They rumble into Bobby's junkyard at a couple hours before dawn. It looks the same as it did all those years ago, the last time Sam was here. His mind fills with memories. His favorite place to run the dogs. He and Dean sipping soda and later beer on the front porch. The avocado garden he'd tried to plant in between an old Buick and and even older Volkswagen when he was ten, because Bobby didn't have the heart to tell him there was no chance in hell a fucking avocado was gonna grow in South Dakota.

Bobby's waiting on the porch when they pull up, nursing a beer and trying his best to look disinterested but Sam can tell he's antsy and been wondering where the hell they've been. He makes his way down the steps and crushes Sam in a hug before he has a chance to get out of the car.

"Missed ya, boy," he says. "How the hell you been?"

"Okay," Sam says, finding himself suddenly embarrassed. It's been four years, easy, since he's seen Bobby. He practically grew up in this junkyard. He should have visited. He should have called.

He's about to open his mouth to apologize when Dean comes around with an armload of shit from the car. "What you got Bobby? You look into that thing we were talking about?"

"What thing?" Sam demands.

"Jesus, boy, it's great to see you too." Bobby takes the armload of stuff and nods toward the house.

"Sorry, Bobby," Dean says, but _goddamn it tell me what you know_ is written all over his face.

"Let's get you settled," Bobby replied firmly. "Botha you are gonna rest if I have to tie you to the goddamn bed. We'll talk about your thing tomorrow."

"What thing?" Sam says, and gets solidly ignored.

The place looks just as Sam remembered it- lots of clutter, every wall stacked to the molding with stuff but meticulously clean, the ancient books and trinkets and paraphernalia kept washed and dusted for Dean's benefit.

"I got your bedroom filled with all kinds a crap," Bobby says to Sam as he leads them up the stairs. "You're gonna have to share with Dean till I can get it cleared out."

They turn left toward the end of the hall to what has always been Dean's room. There was never much in it but a queen-sized bed and a dresser, but Bobby's obviously just cleaned it and changed the bedding. And air purifier whirs quietly in the corner next to an IV poll and there's a TV on the dresser that looks about a thousand years old.

Dean throws his duffel down on the bed. "I told you I'd take care of this stuff myself, Bobby."

Bobby's already halfway back down the hall. "There's pizza in the fridge."

Sam stares at the bed for a long time, imagining himself falling down face first and sinking up to the small of his back and not moving for a very, very long time. But the pizza is also calling out to his gnawing stomach.

And, of course he has to ask: "Dean. What's Bobby looking into for you?"

"The Colt," Dean answers simply. "Lay down. I'll bring you a slice of pizza."

Sam lets him go, sits on the end of the bed and tries to rub the gravel out of his eyes.

It got like this before he left for Stanford, too. To the point where he couldn't decide which argument to start with Dean first, which circle he wanted to go around and around and around in and so after a while he'd stop saying anything at all. Should he start with asking Dean why he was getting his vest instead of letting Sam pound him? Or talk about Dad, maybe. Or ask why the fuck they were going after the Colt and what the hell they were going to do with the Colt when they found it.

Or the Thing That Killed Mom. Or how Sam is starting to doubt he'll ever recover, maybe they're both chronically ill now and in Dean's mind does that change everything or nothing at all?

Or maybe how the idea of sharing a bed with Dean makes Sam sick, not because of Dean but because it'll be the first time since Stanford that Sam's shared a bed with anyone and he's afraid he might try to spoon Dean in the middle of the night just out of habit, and he's even more afraid that Dean's arm might brush his and it might remind Sam of what he's given up and maybe he'll lose it and staring bawling like a baby in the middle of the night in Bobby's house.

He's starting to remember what he was truly running from. It wasn't necessarily the illness, not always. It was that feeling that nothing was ever tying them to the earth, Dad's constant tailspin and how they were always blowing around the country like a family of goddamn tumbleweeds, all while holding on to Dean by the barest of threads. Life was something that came flying at them and when it did they punched it away or shot it into oblivion until it snapped back at them with twice the force and that was how the Winchester family worked.

He doesn't know if he can live that way anymore.

He looks up and notices Bobby standing in the doorway, beer in one hand and a few slices of pizza on a plate in the other, the grease and cheese on top still hissing and bubbling from the microwave.

"Thanks," Sam croaks. The plate is hot and burns the pads of his fingers. He drops it on the nightstand. The beer coats his throat unpleasantly.

"Did some readin' on your little problem," Bobby says, lowering himself down next to Sam with a groan. "It'll go away. Little better every day. These visions of yours, though... that's gonna need more research."

Sam shakes his head. "Nothing to research. Dean knows a woman named Em-"

"We've met," Bobby says. "She's not terribly powerful, as far as psychics go, Sam. I'm pretty sure she can't torture you from across the country like it seems."

"Then what? What the fuck else could it possibly be?"

Bobby gives Sam a warning glare.

"Sorry," Sam says sheepishly.

Bobby nods, standing. "I'll get back to you on that. Eat your pizza. Get some sleep."

"What's Dean doing?"

"He's doin' his thing," Bobby says over his shoulder. "Get some rest."

He flips off the light and then he's gone.

There's a little nightlight shaped like a soccer ball in the corner. A million years ago, it was the nightlight in Sam's room.

The junkyard's always been so quiet.

The pizza might be tasty some other time, but tonight it tastes like cardboard.

Downstairs, Dean is coughing.

This is the first time in years that Sam's really felt like he's at home. The thought makes him so goddamned tired and warm and devastated all at once that he spits his half-chewed pizza back onto the plate and falls into the pillow and maybe sleeps, maybe just blacks out.

::::

To be continued.


	6. Chapter 6

This story, it still exists! It's been a lonnnngggg time, so I'd like to remind whoever's interested that there's a big recap of the fic in Chapter 4.

PART SIX

This time a month (but also a lifetime) ago, Sam would just be getting off his shift in the legal office at Stanford. He'd be putting his notebooks back in his backpack, filing all his folders, shutting down his computer and going home and making love to his girlfriend.

Then they'd have dinner with their friends. She'd drink cran and vodka, a whiskey sour if she were feeling feisty. He'd have beer, always something so dark he'd practically have to chew it. Anything else would give him flashbacks of his brother, smiling with beer froth smeared across his bluish lips.

Sam and his friends would use words like _phallocentric_ in long, pretentious speeches.

And he and Jess would go home and fuck again. Afterward, content, Sam's muscles would melt into the mattress.

He'd fall asleep.

He'd wake to Jess humming. She liked to sit at her vanity in the mornings and pluck her eyebrows. Naked.

_It's called tweezing_, she'd say. _You tweeze your eyebrows_. _You pluck a chicken_.

Those were the days.

These days Sam wakes to the sounds of Dean vomiting in the shower. Coughing in a stream just as endless as the water, coughing without a break, coughing until what's inside comes out.

Today he wakes before Dean, though, so there's nothing like that. Just wheezing. Even with the oxygen, Dean struggles for air in his sleep in a way most people would find unbearable, in a way that looks and sounds like pure suffering. Dean's sleep-relaxed face is the only indication that it isn't.

Sam watches him for a moment. Dean's hugging a corner of the blanket to his chest like a teddy bear. There's a wrinkle at his brow that suggests pain, or maybe a fretful dream. The oxygen cannula has left a pink imprint on his cheek.

"How the hell do you sleep so soundly?" Sam says aloud.

Dean sleeps on. Sam thinks about waking him but he looks exhausted even in slumber.

Instead he wanders downstairs. Bobby is nowhere to be found so Sam rummages around in the fridge and freezer, finds a mountain of food he doesn't have the energy to cook. He finds Dean's jacket -still crumpled into the corner of Bobby's sofa- and fishes the car keys out of the pocket and goes for a drive, which turns into picking up food and coffee.

When he returns with a stack of Styrofoam containers, Dean's eyes are open and the TV is on, but other than that he hasn't moved. Even the feeding tube is still snaking out from beneath the blankets.

Acting sluggish only means one thing.

"Not feeling well, huh?" Sam says.

Dean rubs at one eye and shakes his head. "No."

Sam sets the food down on the table. He stretches out on his side of bed and laces his hands over his stomach. "What's wrong?"

"I dunno," Dean says, "I think I might have cystic fibrosis."

"Funny."

Dean stares at the TV.

Sam licks his lips. "Dean...?"

"Didn't we talk about this?"

"I'm not nagging. I just want to know what's wrong."

"I don't have a specific complaint." Dean shrugs. "Just don't feel good."

Sam tries to distract himself with food. He takes two bites, chews, swallows. Puts another bite in his mouth. Chews it for a second or two. He pretends to watch TV while he monitors Dean's breathing. He's not having any trouble; at least no more trouble than usual. But the way he swallows, pauses at the beginning of each exhale-that tells Sam his brother's hurting somewhere.

The TV. Sam forces himself to watch it. A talk show with some no-name host, evidence that Dean's not really watching it either.

"Something hurt?" Sam tries to make it casual by shoving more food in his mouth.

Dean gives him a sideways glance. "Everything."

"Everything, huh."

"Yes."

"Your entire body hurts. Absolutely everywhere."

"Shut the fuck up, Sam."

"That must be really unpleasant."

"Fuck off."

"You hungry?"

"Huh?"

"I said are you hungry." Sam holds out the container of food. "Want this?"

"To puke in, maybe."

"You gonna puke?"

"No. Yeah." Dean pauses, writhes. "Christ, my stomach."

Sam nods. He chews and swallows what's in his mouth and puts his food on his nightstand. He goes down the hall and rummages under the sink, unearths the basin Bobby's always kept in there.

When he returns, Dean sits up, gingerly, presses his hand to his stomach and closes his eyes and swallows hard. "I hate puking up shit I didn't even eat."

"You've sure been puking a lot lately." It just slips out before Sam can stop himself. Force of habit.

Dean scowls into the puke basin. "Yeah. It's the damnest thing. It's almost like I have a disease that fucks up my digestive system or something. A real mystery."

"You know what I meant."

"I wonder what a doctor would say!"

"Okay, Dean. I get it."

Dean opens his mouth and vomit comes out instead of words. Sam slides his hand across the small of his brother's back.

"I get it," he forces himself to say. "It happens. It happens."

OOOO

It's a marathon bout of puking, followed by relentless dry heaves, which tends to make Dean grumpy. He banishes Sam from the room.

Sam finds Bobby downstairs in the kitchen.

"...realize that, Dan," he's saying into the phone, "but this is a matter of easy way or hard way. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But we're talking about- I wouldn't underestimate- well I warned you. I sure as shit warned you. Yep. You too." Bobby slams the phone on the hook on the wall, shaking his head. "Stubborn bastard," he says, and turns to Sam.

"Morning. Or afternoon, should I say. Sit down." He gestures at the kitchen table.

Sam sits, yawns, digs some crap out of the corner of his eye. "Morning."

"Can you eat regular, boy?"

"Who was that on the phone?"

"A stubborn old bastard, that's who. Now what're you able to eat?"

"Don't bother, I can just pour a bowl of cereal or-"

"-Sammy. I asked what you're able to eat."

Sam can see it now, just how ill he's been, how sick he still is, right there in Bobby's expression.

He has a flash of memory, somewhere around the age of reason, Bobby nursing him through a nasty bout of flu. _Am I like Dean now?_ he'd asked. Bobby had surprised him by laughing until his face turned bright red.

"My stomach's fine," Sam answers, "But I just ate. Went out and got something."

Bobby nods. "Well. I'm makin' eggs." He pours a cup of coffee, sets it in front of Sam and starts pulling stuff out of the fridge. "Promised your brother I'd keep you in bed at least a coupla days. Drink that and then back upstairs with ya."

"Dean's-"

"-you let Dean worry about himself."

"Yes, sir."

Bobby studies him. "I'll make sure he does what he needs to."

Sam's grateful. He takes a scalding swig of coffee and nods.

"He still asleep?"

"Nope. Puking his guts out."

"Don't surprise me. Boy hates that pump." He starts whisking the eggs. After a beat, he says, "It's real good to see you boys again. Your daddy... well. Your daddy said he thought maybe your brother was comin' near the end."

Sam snorts. It was hard not to be a little bitter. "Oh he was. He pretty much dove right off the end."

Bobby doesn't comment. He pours milk into the eggs. "Your Daddy called, told me Dean was real sick." He stops to clear this throat, a little painfully. "He said he didn't think I'd make it over to Boise in time to say goodbye. Said he'd call me when Dean was gone. Then I didn't hear a thing till Dean called me hisself damn near a month later."

Sam opens his mouth to say something but the words get trapped behind a hot lump of guilt. Bobby had cared for them like his own. Like family. He still did. But he wasn't family enough, apparently, to visit Dean on his deathbed. He wasn't family enough for Sam to keep in touch.

"Bobby, I. I am so sorry."

"You don't need to apologize," Bobby says. He keeps his eyes on the pan of eggs. "Open that drawer underneath you."

Sam does, and finds two inhalers, still in their foil packaging. "I don't wanna use any more of Dean's medication."

"Well you're gonna. I've gotta whole mess of them set to expire before he'll ever get to them anyway. I also got a spell you can do that'll help, too. It calls for a shitload of saffron, but I'm sure we can wrestle some up from somewhere. I'll go into town tomorrow."

"Thanks, Bobby," is all Sam replies. Performing a spell isn't something he's ready to think about quite yet.

Bobby dumps the scrambled eggs on a plate. "I'm gonna eat these in the shop. Get back on up to bed."

He leaves Sam alone in the kitchen. Sam thinks about following him, refusing to lie down, insisting on being of use, but he finds that he's exhausted again. He puffs the blue inhaler for instant relief, then takes two puffs of the orange one. To delay the inevitable he rinses Bobby's pan, then washes it, dries it, puts it in the drawer beneath the stove.

Dean is sleeping soundly when he returns to their room. The puke basin is on the floor, a fresh puddle inside. Sam takes it to the bathroom and flushes it, watches the water swirl and tries not to worry about the implications. Was Dean too sick to clean up after himself? In too much pain?

No. He just knew Sam would come back, eventually, and take care of it.

Sam finds that his irritation doesn't last long, that his body is simply too tired to hold onto any strong emotions for very long. It drains out of him like liquid. He crawls into bed beside Dean and goes back to sleep.

OOOO

John's sleeping off a bender, or a bullet in the ass, maybe, or both. Bobby hears it in his voice, his gravely swollen "yeahmmm?"

"Got your boys with me," Bobby says.

John groans, yawns, rustles the phone around a little. "Both of 'em?"

"Yep."

"How the hell... Sammy left school?"

"He left school."

"Why?"

"You'll have to ask him."

John huffs. "And Dean?"

"They've both been better."

There's a pause. "What happened?"

"I'll let them tell you. When you get here."

"Bobby, goddamn it, quit talkin' to me like I'm some kinda deadbeat. I just saw Dean not six weeks ago."

"But from what I hear, he ain't seen you."

John makes an exasperated noise that makes the line crackle. "Bobby. If my boys are sick or hurt, I'll get on the road right now. But if they're safe..."

"If they're safe _what_?"

"I need you to help me out here, Bobby. I know you know where it is."

"That's another thing you can ask your sons. If it weren't for Dean, you wouldn't even know the goddamn gun existed."

More silence. Bobby imagines that John is probably rubbing at his temples in frustration, and good. Serves the bastard right.

"I can't let Dean hunt," John says. "He ain't healthy enough anymore and you know it. Last time he damn near didn't make it."

Bobby wishes he could jump through phone, put his hands around John's neck and squeeze. "Maybe it ain't about hunting. Maybe he just don't know another way to get your attention. Lord knows being your son never did the trick."

"Christ, Bobby. Just another month or so."

"I was changing Sammy's shitty diaper first time I heard you say that."

Silence on John's end, but Bobby can hear him fuming.

Bobby closes his eyes and takes a breath. He's gonna get hung up on if he doesn't soften things up. "John. You know as well as I do that he's already on borrowed time. Dean's a grown man. He know he ain't well, he knows the risks, and he wants to hunt."

"I can't allow it."

"Maybe it ain't your decision anymore."

"Bobby-"

"Look, John. I'm beggin' you... take a week off. Come see Sam. How long's it been?"

"Sam doesn't want to see me."

"You're his father. 'Course he wants to see you."

There's a pause on the other end of the line. "He tell you that?"

"He don't need to tell me that. The boy just left everything to be with his brother. He had a life out there at Stanford, and now he'd don't. And he's been sick, and drivin' hisself nuts worrying over Dean. He could use someone around."

John snorts. "And you think he needs _me_ around."

"You're his daddy."

Another sigh. It's a long time before John says anything else, but Bobby waits patiently on the line. When he speaks again, his voice is low and weak.

"You say he's been sick? With what?"

"I'll let him tell you that."

John's voice returns full force. "Goddamn it, Bobby. Always fucking meddling."

"-you're goddamn right I'm meddling," Bobby says. "We were a family once, John. You're goddamn right I'm meddling."

This time the silence drags on so long Bobby wonders if the line went dead. But then John says, his voice calm again, "Bobby?"

"Yeah."

"I can be there in two days. Two days, alright? Just... tell me where I can find the Colt."'

"You're a bastard."

"Bobby. Tell me."

"I tell you and you'll come see your boys, is that what you're sellin' me?"

"I'll come see 'em. I promise."

So that's how it's gonna be.

"Daniel Elkins, you stubborn son of a bitch," Bobby says, and hangs up.

OOOO

Sam dreams that Dean dying.

His mouth is a lake of blood, spilling over his lips, down his neck. His chest jerks with feeble nothing-breaths, his face his blue except for blood-shot eyes. His hands are two claws, one at his throat and one as his chest. His skin crawls tight along his ribs, interrupted only by the feeding tube snaking out of his belly, once an innocuous medical necessity, now a horrific tentacle with a mouth suctioned to his abdomen, sucking out Dean's life.

Splitting pain slices its way through Sam's head, so harshly he has to close this eyes against bubbling nausea, turn his back on his dying brother to bury his face in his hands.

That same white light flashes, signaling the beginning of a vision, but there's no change of scenery this time. Just Em, her face inches from his. The freckles on her face stand out like red pepper flakes. Her red hair is a mane around her head.

"_Don't do this, Sam," she says. _

"You're gonna heal my brother," Sam says to her.

He reaches out blindly and finds Dean's arm, gnarled like a tree branch. He grabs for Em without touching her. He grabs her and squeezes.

"_Don't do this Sam," she says, "Don't do this." _

"Heal my brother," Sam repeats. "Heal him."

"_Don't do this Sam. Don't do this. Don't do this Sam. Sam don't-" _

"SAM. Sammy! Jesus Christ."

Dean's voice.

Sam opens his eyes and sits straight up in bed.

Bobby's house, Dean's room, the bed they're sharing. He's slick with sweat. His grip on Dean's arm is so forceful that Dean's fingers are puffy and red.

"Sammy," Dean's saying, "you're fine. Let go. Let go of me."

"Shit," Sam breathes, freeing his brother. "Shit. What happened?"

"A nightmare." Dean reaches for him and Sam recoils. He can't help but look at the button on his brother's belly and see it like in the dream, the tube sucking instead of feeding.

Dean sees him staring at it. "What?"

"I... nothing."

"Did it happen again? Sam look at me. Did Em give you another... vision, or whatever?"

Sam looks at Dean. Something is different about his face but Sam can't put his finger on what. They breathe and blink at one another.

"Tell me what you saw," Dean says.

"I didn't see anything, I just... you were... it was just some weird nightmare, I g-" Sam stops.

Dean has an odd look on his face.

"What's wrong?" Sam asks.

Dean takes a breath. Blinks rapidly.

"Dean?"

"I'm fine. I'm. I'm good."

"Christ."

They sit for a moment. It's nearly 10 a.m., according to Sam's watch. Outside the sun bounces blindingly off the old cars, the air around them undulating with heat. Despite the purifier and a small fan on Dean's night table, the room is suffocatingly hot and dry.

"You sure you're okay?" Dean says.

Sam nods. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine."

"Let's track down Bobby, huh?"

"Yeah."

Silently they dress and make their way downstairs and out the front door. The outside air is even hotter, even more stifling. The change stops Dean in his tracks. He sputters, holds tight to the porch railing, coughs short, dry, suppressed coughs into the back of his hand.

"You sure _you're_ okay?"

Dean swallows. "Off day, I guess. But I'll be fine."

They have a deal, Sam reminds himself, and presses his lips together. Dean was honest. So Sam will keep his mouth shut.

They find Bobby out in the garage under the hood of an old pickup. Dean takes two beers out of the shop fridge and hands one to Sam. Beer sounds awful but Sam takes it anyway, pops the lid on the opener nailed to the wall and forces himself to take a swig.

"Boys," Bobby glances up from his work. "How'd ya sleep?"

"Fine," they say in unison.

Bobby regards them suspiciously at first, but shrugs it away. He wipes his face with a hanky out of his back pocket.

"Let's hear it, Bobby," Dean says. "Did you find it?"

Bobby nods. "Your gun is in the hands of a man named Daniel Elkins. Really ornery son-of-a-bitch. I'll tell you one thing, you ain't getting that Colt without a fight."

"Where's he live?" Dean asks.

Sam opens his mouth to protest, but Bobby beats him to it.

"Now hold on," he says, "You boys are gonna stay here for a while. Rest up."

"Bobby-"

"Tomorrow."

"But it's-"

"Tomorrow, Dean. I'll tell you where he lives tomorrow."

There will be hell to pay for arguing, that much is clear. Dean practically stamps his foot, but he doesn't retort.

Sam tries to change the subject. "You need any help in here?"

"Nope. Be in in a minute. Got some ribs that need to get in the oven if we want 'em for dinner tonight, though, if either of you are feelin' up to it."

The idea of cooking makes Sam so tired he wants to lay down right there the shop floor. But Dean takes a mighty swig of his beer and nods. "We'll get started."

Back in the kitchen, Sam's irritation starts to fester. Dean doesn't even mention clearing his chest. He doesn't take a step toward the fridge with the antibiotics, though he hasn't been on any for weeks and it's dangerous. He whistles as he rummages in Bobby's cupboards for a roasting pan like he's the healthiest person alive.

Sam tries to swallow it back. This is the whole problem, isn't it? Dean's obviously feeling well today. He should just let Dean feel well. But his brain tortures him with flashes of his nightmare- the blood overtaking Dean's mouth, spilling over his chin. The tube spasming in his abdomen. And then Dean in that hospital bed, the fan blowing into his fluttering eyes...

There's a plastic bag on the table. Sam paws through it to distract himself. Bobby's never been one to tell them to keep out of things. Inside is a package of big catheter tip syringes.

"What are these for?" Sam holds them up.

Dean is dousing the ribs in sauce. He turns and looks, pats his stomach where the g-tube is. "To clean this."

"I _see_," Sam says meaningfully. "You should show me how to do it."

Maybe the conversation will jog his brother's memory, remind him he has treatments to do.

Dean shrugs. "Just gotta push warm water through the tube." He brings a dab of the rib sauce to his mouth. "Ugh. Old man's losing his taste buds. Hey, go to the pantry, see if he has any honey."

It's more than Sam can take. "You ready for PT after this?"

"Sure thing," Dean says, but his shoulders stiffen, and he bows his head in that put-upon way. It makes Sam feel bad, then angry.

He is so tired of feeling like a bully all the time.

He goes and digs through the pantry until he finds a old jar of honey shaped like a bear. It looks circa 1950, but it'll do. He brings it back into the kitchen.

Dean has put the ribs in the oven and he's sitting at the kitchen counter, one of the big syringes in one hand, an economy-sized bottle of enzymes in the other.

"Sam," he says. "We need to talk."

Sam takes a seat at the table. "What's up?"

"I wasn't sure at first, and I didn't know how to tell you, but... something's happened."

"Happened?"

"Promise me you won't freak out."

"How can I promise that?" Sam's voice raises against his will. "Tell me what's wrong."

Dean shrinks away from him. "Sammy. Don't. Please."

Sam forces his voice down a few decibels. "I'm calm, okay? I'm calm. Just tell me."

"I feel... I feel _well_. I don't..."

"You feel...?"

"I mean- listen." Dean forces a cough. It's dry. Completely dry. Like a normal person choking on a cracker. "I mean. I feel healthy."

Healthy. Sam can barely wrap his brain around the word. Maybe he's misunderstood. "I'm glad you're having a good day, Dean, but-"

"No. Not like a good day. Like... healthy. I feel healthy." Moisture stands in Dean's eyes, gathers in his bottom lashes. "I feel like... I feel like it's gone."

"You feel like what's gone?"

Dean throws his hands in the air. "Everything. All of it. The CF."

"You mean like when Em-"

"No. No, this is totally different. All she could ever do was give me a little relief. This isn't relief, this is like... I feel _cured_, Sammy." Dean seems stunned by the feel of the phrase on his lips. He mouths it silently to himself. He looks just as terrified as Sam feels.

"I feel cured," he repeats.

Blood rushes to Sam's head. He grips the edge of the dining room table to stay upright because the room seems to spin. He discovers that he feels nauseous, that something is pressing into the back of his throat.

"You feel cured," he croaks. "How... how."

"I don't know." Dean covers his mouth. "Fuck, Sam. _Fuck_. I don't know."

"Maybe it's," Sam begins, but he has no words to finish the sentence. There's no denying that Dean looks different. His face is pink. The oxygen-deprived tinge to his lips has vanished. He breathes with the same ease as anyone. Better than Sam. So maybe it's what? Maybe it's just wishful thinking? A miracle?

Not a miracle. Maybe the exact opposite.

Sam recalls what he said to Em in his dream: _You will heal my brother_.

"How long have you. Dean. How long have you been feeling... this way?"

"Since this morning. Your nightmare woke me up, and-" Dean's eyes go wide. "Oh fuck. You think...?"

"She... she did it somehow. Through me." The hair stands up on Sam's arms. Next to him, Dean's hands are trembling, his enzyme pills rattling in his grip.

"My stomach was killing me," Dean says. "Finally managed to sleep through it, and then I woke up to you trying to take my arm off. And it didn't hurt anymore."

"Maybe it just went away."

Dean shakes his head. "I always have pain somewhere, Sam. Always. I don't remember the last time I didn't hurt somewhere. But now, it's like, it's like being numb or something. And I can _breathe_, I feel like I have four lungs-"

"Dean, please," Sam says.

He needs Dean to shut up, he needs moment to think. Inside he feels absolutely sick, a wholly unbearable mixture of joy and fear, dread and hope.

"So maybe... maybe this is a good thing then," he ventures, "I mean. You're healed. You... you're healed."

Sam tries a smile on for size, beams it at his brother, hoping maybe, just maybe it'll be returned. Dean tries and doesn't quite make it. His head falls into his hands.

"Fuck me. I never wanted to feel like this again."

Instinctively Sam scoots his chair closer, and touches his knee to Dean's. "Feel what? What's wrong?"

Dean bats Sam away. "Nothing's wrong, that's the whole problem. You remember when I was a little kid? Dad found that healer? That stupid fucking hippy?"

"Of course."

"Well. I never really knew what 'bad' felt like until I knew what it was like to feel 'good.'"

"But this could be permanent, Dean. You said-"

"-No." Dean shakes his head. "It's not permanent, Sammy. It never is."

"Maybe this time is different," Sam says, clinging to hope.

But he remembers Em's warning, when they had first met, a warning that had once made no sense to him. A warning his brain replays for him in vivid detail, a warning that tells him deep down that Dean is right:

_Sometimes relief hurts just as badly. Maybe worse. Do you understand?_

:::

To be continued.


End file.
